THERE COMES A stage in life when one sometimes forgets to celebrate the passing years; truth be told, it’s hard enough just to keep up with them, they pass so quickly. Recently, a long-time friend knocked on my front door, bearing an early birthday gift: a large round patisserie tin containing a tasty-looking confection topped with blackberries and icing. Delicious as the cake looked, the real present, she told me, was the tin: an antique of sorts, showing its age a little around the edges (like me). About nine inches in diameter, the tin had ‘Côte d’Or’ written in large brown and gold curvy letters, canopied over a stylised drawing in cream, ochre and umber of a side-facing elephant, trunk aloft, palm trees and pyramids in the background.

Further investigation later that day told me that this was the branding of a chocolate-producing Belgian company, founded in 1883 and trading under a pseudo-French translation of the name Gold Coast, the one-time British colony where I was born and which was the source of much of the cocoa used in manufacturing chocolate.