WE VISIT BOUKNVILLE 73 



of invitation the name of our appointed host and 

 guide. 



So quickly does our host respond to a telephone 

 message that we have only just begun to take a first 

 glance round the cosy waiting-room when he is at our 

 side, greeting us in a way that seems to suggest we are 

 doing Bournville an honour by our visit. 



Our host pilots us across a strikingly beautiful rock 

 garden, which gives access to the warehouse. In a 

 lobby skirting a store, where vast piles of bulging sacks 

 of cocoa are stacked, we are met by two other experts, 

 representing the factory side of the Bournville enterprise, 

 and together we all adjourn to a dressing-room, where 

 we are to robe ourselves in preparation for our tour 

 among the machines. In merry mood we select our 

 fit and fancy from an assortment of spotless white 

 overalls and caps; but the men who know the habits 

 of the machines are very much in earnest when they 

 tell us that the mills will dust us very brown with cocoa 

 powder, and warn us to fasten up our protective kit 

 securely from top to toe. 



Appropriately equipped, we pass on into the store 

 where the cocoa beans are brought for grading. During 

 the first stage of our tour, we are told, we shall see how 

 the beans are treated up to a certain point, no matter 

 whether they are destined to be transformed into cocoa 

 or chocolate. 



The bulging sacks by which we are surrounded are old 

 friends of ours, or near relations of old friends, whom 

 we have met under memorably amusing and interesting 

 conditions in far distant lands. They are bags of cocoa 

 beans from such widely scattered parts of the tropical 

 world as South America, the West Indies, Ceylon, the 

 Gold Coast, and Nigeria. 



10 



