Wrangham approaches the subject from the perspective of an anthropologist and primatologist; he has worked at Gombe with Jane Goodall.  His hypothesis extrapolates from three sets of observations.  First, when food is cooked, nutrients are more easily digested and assimilated into the body.    Cooking softens meat, loosening connective tissue and allowing enzymes access to muscle proteins and fats.   Cooking also breaches the rigid cell walls of plants, exposing starches and sugars and vegetable fats to digestion.  Cooked meals require less work and less time to eat them.  Less effort needs to be spent in finding food that can be easily digested.  Cooking saves us time; time to think, to plan, to bond and it has to be said, to eat more food. 

By comparison, other mammalian species spend the majority of their time hunting, feeding and digesting their food.  Sheep and cows would never get enough energy to reproduce if they didn’t eat all day.  A male tiger needs to spend nearly all its waking hours hunting.  Only when it has had a big blow out, can the tiger afford to rest up and digest.   

But for humans, it’s different. They had time.  People gathered around their fires in the evening to tell stories, to sing, to drink, to plan the next day’s activities and to make love. It was around the hearth that tribes forged their identity in mythology. Fire became the focus of the social group, the hearth, the forge of civilisation. Cooking expanded the range of foods that could be eaten.  This meant that people didn’t have to hunt and gather particular foods; they could cultivate and herd them in farms.  This allowed people to settle in villages, towns and cities.  

Fire also led to a division of labour. Women were the cooks, the keepers of the fire, the gatherers and of course the mothers, whereas men were the hunters, the farmers and the protectors.    

Not only has fire enabled human beings to evolve socially, Wrangham believes that they have also adapted anatomically and physiology to eating cooked foods.   Our jaws are much weaker than our closest cousins, the chimpanzees; not at all equipped for cracking hard nuts and seeds or for tearing meat.  Our large intestines are nowhere near as commodious and efficient at extracting nutrients from uncooked vegetable matter.  People can live on raw food if they spend time seeking out and preparing foods that are sufficiently soft, but they lose weight and tend to become infertile.  Thus it seems we have evolved into a culinary ape.   Perhaps even our hairlessness was an adaptation to the control of fire.  Did fire allow us to dispense with fur and become the naked ape.        

The important thing about a good hypothesis is not that it’s right but that it makes you think.  Wrangham’s hypothesis certainly makes us think , but it is probably not entirely accurate. 

 We are not the only species with small guts.  Carnivores,  dogs, cats have much smaller guts probably because they don’t need a big fermenter to break down complex plant material.  Perhaps the early homonids were predominantly hunters and scavengers; they ate predominantly meat and were strategically adapted to hunting and trapping animals.  But their poor dentition may indicate that they lived on soft body organs or even on food that was half rotten with some additional fruits and leaves.     

 Cooking is not the only way of softening food, acid in the stomach does it too.  After they have made a kill, lions and tigers need to rest for several hours for acid digestion to occur.  The acid in human stomachs is as strong as that in other carnivores.  The thing is, we can survive without cooking.  We can all eat raw food though we may not have much time for anything else.  Cooking saves time.          

But is there any evidence in the fossil record that links the development of humans with fire?   Humanoids with the characteristic shape that we have now,  Homo habilis and Homo erectus,  appeared about two and half million years ago, but the earliest evidence we have of hominids  controlling fire is 750,000 years ago.     

So was cooking the big breakthrough that allowed human beings to evolve into a more physiologically efficient mammal by relying on an external source of energy?   Did we develop our human shape and physiology because our ancestors had learnt to harness fire?   Or was  cooking an evolutionary accelerant rather than an instigator? 

According to Darwin’s deductions, evolution of species does not tend to occur gradually over millions of years, it is jerked forwards by environmental change;  only certain individuals were sufficiently equipped to survive and breed under the new conditions and they produced more individuals with the same improved adaptations. 

The accepted wisdom is that human evolution was instigated by climate change in sub-Saharan Africa.  Less rainfall led to a dying back of the rainforest and its replacement by savannah.   Certain of our ancestors could survive at the edges of the forest.  They learnt how to trap and kill the grazing animals for food.   Some had a more flexible thumb that could be opposed to the other digits allowing them to grip and manipulate tools.  These better equipped individuals could make and use tools, they could fashion weapons, they could throw things;  they could project into the future.  These adaptations led quickly to others.  Only those with the most efficient weaponry and skill, would survive, the rest would be killed off. 

Genetics provides the potential, the environment brings it out.   The brain develops according to experience, though some brains are more adaptable.  In a rapidly changing environment, only those apes able to adapt, survive.  So, over relatively few generations, a sub culture is selected out.  Seen from this context, fire is another tool, something the advancing ape learnt to control, but it rapidly became indispensible. Hominids adapted to it and indeed could not survive without it.  Fire now does so many other things besides cooking, it drives engines that make things and get us places.  And now we have discovered enormous supplies of fossil fuels, we are totally dependent on the energy it gives us, so much so that few of us would survive without it.  And yet, supplies of fossil fuel are finite.  They will be depleted in 30 years.

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So what is going on?  Weight gain is not a mystery.  Fat does not materialise out of nowhere. Obesity can only be explained in terms of an imbalance of energy consumption over energy expenditure. Fat people are eating too much and not exercising enough.  It’s all down, so cynics assert, to a combination of gluttony and sloth, a gross demonstration of moral failure.  But is that a fair indictment?  Some people may have a genetic tendency to put on weight; after all, the biggest risk factor for obesity is having parents who are overweight or obese.  The idea that a pre-history of starvation might have selected a thrifty gene was currency until very recently, through we now know that the way we conserve energy is under the control of several different genes.  

And there is also an environmental issue. The Foresight Report, published in 2007, declared that obesity is a normal response to an abnormal social environment. The watchword is convenience. People in the west are money rich and time poor.  There is always too much to do.  Time must not be wasted.  We eat fast food and get around in fast cars, trains and planes. Time spent on cooking, the cost of food, buying local food, growing our own food have all decreased.  Fewer people grow their own vegetables or buy local produce. We have become disconnected from food.production and preparation in the same way as we are uncoupled from the use of our own legs to get around. Fewer people are walking or cycling to work.  Children are taken to school by car. And fewer people engage in energetic sports or activities.  On the other hand, the availability of fast food outlets, low cost bistros and restaurants, food variety, food promotion and portion sizes have all increased alongside the ownership of cars and improvement in public transport.  In fact, less and less people need to go to work any more. They can just plug into their virtual Microsoft office and stay at home. We are rather like the cafeteria rats, who, when confined to their cages and fed a varied, appetizing diet in abundance, grow enormously fat.    

This fast food, car based revolution has given licence for passive overconsumption and immobility. With too many opportunities to eat and less requirement for physical activity, people cannot help but gain weight, or so it seems.  Fast, convenience food is cheap and rich in fat.  Restaurants tend to serve big portions of high fat foods. And people tend to eat what is put on their plates. One experiment showed that when soup was presented in a bottomless, refillable bowl, people just kept eating.   Time that might be spent in physical activity is all too readily plundered by the computer and television.  The exhausted boredom, induced by the tedious combination of overstimulation and inertia can tend to cause people to seek solace in comfort eating. 

But if it was just the environment that was responsible for the obesity epidemic, then why aren’t we all fat.  80% of adults living in an obesogenic social environment are not obese and 40% are not even overweight. 

Take the French, for example; they traditionally eat a diet that is so high in cholesterol and fat and yet have less heart disease and obesity.  The most obvious explanation is  portion size.  Dr Paul Rozin in a recent article entitled ‘The Ecology of Eating’ showed that portion sizes for the same meals were 25% per cent larger in the United States than in France. Barbara Rolls showed that increasing portion sizes over the course of a week increased energy intake by 4,500 Cals, equivalent to 1.5 Kg of fat.  Increasing the consumption of fat resets physiological satiety mechanisms, so that more fat can be accommodated and people want to eat the same high fat meal again. People often notice a marked increase in appetite and weight after the annual Christmas blow-out.  The opposite works after starvation; fat receptors can be up or down-regulated. Exercise is good because it blunts this desensitisation and hunger.

The way food is served, the availability, variety, portion size and even the shape of plates all have a role in increasing intake.  We eat more when food is prepared by someone else. If we are eating with others, we tend to conform to the norm.  Food outlets tend to serve the most enormous portions.  They give too much choice and choice is inimicable to regulation.  When people are presented with a meal containing a variety of foods, they will eat much more than if they are given limitless quantities of the same food. 

So the answer to preventing obesity seems so easy.  If it is just a matter of the environment, then all you have to do is alter your personal environment.  Eat less,  cut down on portion sizes, choose low fat foods, don’t have seconds, don’t eat between meals, ration chocolate and alcohol, cook at home, only eat meat twice a week, cut down on butter, pastry, don’t rely on public transport so much, walk, cycle, take regular exercise. Take control of your life. Go on a diet.  Put yourself on an exercise regime.  About 70% of women and 30% of men claim to be on weight reducing diet. So why for most, doesn’t it work? 

Twenty years ago, the journalist, Geoffrey Cannon, published his eye catching title, ‘Dieting makes you fat’.  His thesis might be explained in part by the facts that it is fat people who tend to diet and it is very difficult to lose weight by dieting.  But there is another factor; if you deprive somebody of something you will increase the desire for it, and when they are let off the hook, they will rapidly eat more. Dieters tend to crave food and the foods they crave the most are those that they are trying to resist. 

Disinhibited eating is enhanced by the last supper effect (I’ll just have one more chocolate, then I’ll stop) and the what the hell effect, (oh, now I’ve had sticky toffee pudding, I may as well have another portion),  as well as by alcohol consumption,  eating alone, the behaviour of co-diner, and negative mood.  Dieting is more difficult when people are under an increased emotional load and feel brittle. The hedonic tendency to eat between meals might indicate an insecurity that demands satisfaction through the most basic source. Walking on the moors in late spring, I notice how lambs rush to their ewes to suckle as soon as I approach. Is that an example of the same insecurity?   

The overwhelming temptation to break one’s diet is an illustration of what psychologists call, ‘Wegeners White Bear Effect’.  The more you try to suppress any thoughts about something, the more you will tend to think about it, which results in a rebound in the behaviour you are trying to suppress.  Suppression can make people exquisitely sensitive to environmental cues.  The eponymous heroine in the novel,  Leila’s Feast, illustrates how starvation can make somebody very aware of food.  Leila wrote her cookery book while she was starving in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. A recent UK survey showed that people tended to think about eating 200 times a day.  This might suggest that they were exerting a tight control on their eating behaviour, which would just enhance the craving for food. 

You have to devote time and thought to cooking healthy meals. It takes too much work to exercise.  It’s all too hard, especially if you are doing it against such a resistance.  In the past, if we didn’t work, we would starve. Now our eating has become uncoupled from the production  and preparation of food. We don’t need to work to get our meals, so why should we?  If food is there, why not eat it?  So perhaps human nature hasn’t changed that much, we may have always tended to be lazy and greedy.

But this still doesn’t explain why we aren’t all fat.  Maybe it’s all down to the culture of eating.  The French eat less but spend more time eating.  They make more of an occasion out of eating; the ambience is different.  The French tend to eat together.  A meal serves more functions that just the supply of energy.  Eating is part of a whole sequence of social grooming.  Eating together with family and friends provides relaxation, companionship, comfort and reassurance. A family that eats together tends to stay together. One in five families in the UK sit down to eat together only once or less than once a week. Many people in the United States or in Britain eat alone and can miss out on the social benefits of mealtimes and so may consume extra large portions to compensate for a degree of social deprivation.

So is overeating related to deprivation?  It is well known that people who have been subjected to starvation tend to stockpile food, eat up every last morsel and overfeed their children. Population studies have shown a definite link between poverty and obesity, but not all poor people get fat. The historian, Peter Brears, suggested that working mothers lose the skill and the time to prepare meals and tend to rely more on convenience food, rich in fat. In the Foresight report the only group who are less likely to become obese are reasonably affluent women living in the south east of England who have the time to keep fit and choose healthy dietary options. 

But since mealtimes are a whole nurturing experience rather than just a nourishing experience, is eating a surrogate for other types of deprivation?  Does the loneliness and depression that is also so prevalent in the United States and Britain, make them more likely to turn to food for comfort and solace?  People who don’t actively engage in life get bored and eat to feed their interest and confidence rather than their body.  When I conducted psychological interviews on patients with morbid obesity, I uncovered a severe degree of loneliness, depression and emotional deprivation.  So is there a typical obese personality; insecure, needy, bored and chaotic, the sort of person who might tend to turn to drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, love and companionship as well as food to satisfy their compulsive needs?  When something happens, a person’s ability to regulate their food intake gets disturbed alongside regulation of other behaviours, sleep, mood and bowel habit, for example.  There are super-regulators, who intensify their control and tend to lose weight and others, who are perhaps more chaotic and needy, who become dysregulated and obese. So do food manufacturers and restauranteurs just supply what is needed so badly? 

A recent report suggested that the tendency of people to use food to satisfy their emotional needs may be gender specific. The psychologist, David Lewis, was recently reported as saying that when it comes to tongues, melting chocolate better than passionate kissing, at least for women. All men know that sex is better than chocolate; for women it’s the other way round..

So have psychological factors, such as life traumas, deprivation, need, loneliness and depression, which seem to have increased over the same period impacted with the environmental changes to create the current obesity epidemic?  And how much of a role  do genetic factors play?   

The current obesity epidemic is such a complex mix of mind, body and meaning with culture, history and development each playing their part. There is no easy explanation, though the interaction of the loneliness, boredom and insecurity of modern life with the abundance of cheap high energy foods and the reduced requirement for physical work seem to be essential drivers.

So how can we remain slim and healthy in an obesogenic environment?  Maybe the answer is to dare to stand out from the crowd and adopt an active, healthy and interesting life style where eating is not a predominant factor.  Children, who go on the fat camps run by Dr Paul Gately, lose weight as they gain in self esteem.  So the message is don’t rely on dieting; this is almost like treating deprivation with deprivation. Don’t necessarily diet (though you may just watch your weight), but get out there, do things, be active, get involved and maybe, just maybe, you can allow your weight to look after itself just fine.   

This article was inspired by a talk delivered by Andrew Hill, Leeds Professor of Health Psychology, to the Guilds of Food and Health Writers at their joint meeting at Artisan, Booth’s bistro in Kendal, Cumbria. 

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Exhausted with the pressure of  work, the bustle and clutter of city life?  Then don’t head for the crowded beaches of  the Mediterranean,  follow the geese; go north to Finland.     

Arola farm is in the region of Eastern Finland known as Suomussalmi, just south of the Arctic Circle and within sight of the watchtowers of the Russian Federation.   It lies on the edge of Martinselkonen National Park,  a Tolkienesque wilderness of dark lakes, vast open forests of spruce, pine and birch, and broad expanses of grassy bog; a magic land of moss and lichen.  Here, over a hundred miles away from the nearest town, you can wander all day in complete solitude, your every step monitored in the tree top conversations of Ravens, the laughter of woodpeckers and the mocking call of the Cuckoo.   

Suomussalmi is on the migration route.  Many of the birds that overwinter in England, such as Whooper Swans, White fronted and Brent Geese pass through here en route to their breeding grounds in Siberia. Others such as Fieldfares, Redwings, Brambling, Waxwing and Golden Plover breed up here but are much more colourful, extravert and  flambuoyant than they are at home.  Bramblings,  small dull finches with stripy wings and narrow white rumps when glimpsed flying up from Cambridgeshire fields on dark wet winter’s, stand sentry in their smart black and red uniforms and announce their presence in long drawn out whistles. And one morning while canoeing up river, we came within a few feet of a Red Throated Diver,  late for the wedding in his light grey morning suit, black and white striped shirt and crimson cravat.  A few Siberian species have also taken up residence in Suomussalmi; Bluethroats, Cranes and Siberian Jays.    

But Eastern Finland is not just for the birds.    If you go down in the woods, you’ll, be sure of a big surprise. Martinselkonen is a refuge for the few remaining really large European mammals. There are Brown Bear, Elk, Wolves, Lynx and Beaver in the forest.  It is just like being in Canada.  Arola has its own bear hide, at the side of a forest clearing a few miles from the farm.  Every night, Eero, our host, leaves 100 kilos of fish and elk meat out under a log.  With their own five-star restaurant,  the bears, normally shy, venture cautiously out of the forest in the long light nights often bringing their cubs with them to feed, play and even make love.  European Brown Bears are enormous creatures.  The male weighs in at over 200 kilos and stands over ten feet tall.   The female is not quite that size, but when they make love, the earth really moves!    But this is no zoo; these are wild animals.  In the hide we speak in whispers and cover our skin to disguise the smell.  Bears have a very good sense of smell.  The slightest whiff of human presence and they gallop off into the forest.  

Bears are not the only creatures to come to Eero’s restaurant.  Occasionally a Wolverine, a kind of large polecat, will venture out for a snack if he thinks the coast is clear.  And a pair of White Tailed Sea Eagles balance on the topmost branches of a spruce tree, fending off attacks from the gulls and waiting until the bears have gone to grab some fish. 

The Sappinen family have farmed in Arola for generations, even throughout the chaos of war when this region was occupied first by the Russians and then by the Nazis.  In 1939 it was Eero’s mother, Lempi, who bundled her children in a blanket, put them on a sledge and escaped across the thawing river to warn the people of Juntusranta that the Russian soldiers had come across the border.  In Finland, as in many parts of Europe, life for small farmers has become increasingly difficult.  And so Helena, Eero and their son Jeru gave up the farm just two years ago and decided to open their farm for tourism.  Visitors can stay here at any time of the year.  Helena once worked as a nurse in Plymouth and speaks English fluently.  She can accommodate up to 11 people in two houses; the old farmhouse and Hevonkuusa,  a lovely log cabin, 500 metres down the track by the lake.  The latter comes with its own smoke sauna and diving platform.

A week in Arola will broaden your mind.  All you need to bring is a love of the wilderness and a sense of adventure.  Children will love the excitement of it. There is so much to see and do.  Trekking in Finnish National Parks is very easy.  The trails are well maintained  and marked,  the traverses across the swamps are dry and boarded and there are comfortable huts equipped with stove and fuel and clean toilets, where you can stay  overnight at no cost at all.  In the summer you can canoe up river to the rapids, trek all day in the forest, watch the wildlife and return for a wonderful sauna and nerve-tingling dip in the river. But in the long winter, when the forest is transformed into a wonderland, you can ski all day along forest trails and return to your log house, warmed by a stove constructed from the local dark soapstone.  Or perhaps you would prefer to go by sledge, pulled by teams of eager huskies. 

Self catering is an option,  but it would be a mistake not to enjoy Helena’s wonderful traditional Finnish cuisine.  Locked in by snow for half the year and with the nearest store 5 miles away, self sufficiency is the by-word.    So berries picked late in the season are boiled and bottled; the delicious dark crimson blue berries swollen with sweetness,  the creamy cloudberries with their subtle hints of butterscotch,  cranberries from the bog and my favourite, the wonderful combination of sweet, sour and bitter flavours of the lingonberries.   Mushrooms are also stored over winter.  Some need to be boiled twice to remove the toxins and then dried.  Others are pickled in brine. Made up into a sauce, the rich earthy flavours are a delicious complement for the tender sweetness of fresh pike or the meatiness of Elk.  Fish is caught locally all the year round.  In the summer, swarms of roach can be caught by net, cleaned and cooked slowly in salt, onion, olive oil and lemon and bottled with tomato.  In the winter, pike can be caught by rod and line through a hole drilled through the thick ice of the lake.    Elk is shot during the brief hunting period in October and kept frozen overwinter.  It tastes like beef, but does not have the fat content.   Reindeer is smoked and salted and is lovely as midday snack in the forest between two slices of freshly baked rye bread.  Beetroot, cabbage and potatoes grow quickly during the light nights of the Finnish summer and can be pickled and stored through the winter. 

To book a holiday at Arola, visit the website at www.arolantila.susmussalmi.net or write to Helena Sappinen at Arolantie 5, FIN 89920 RUHTINANSALMI. (Tel/fax  +358 8 734 403 ). Travel is remarkably inexpensive.  Flights from various airports in England to Helsinki can cost around £200.  Then take a flight to Kuusamo (£80 return), from where Jeru will collect you and drive you the one and half hour journey to the farm.

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Mulu’s cries add a chill to the low afternoon sun.

The villagers had been on the hillside opposite the ambo, the basaltic stele that we were attempting to scale, all day, laughing and shouting cries of encouragement. But now it was late, night was imminent and they had begun to panic. If we spent the night on the mountain, the spirits would surely kill us.

We had started well. There was a clear diagonal line up the western face that must have marked the site of the original steps. But this soon ended and we were forced to muscle our way up a greasy chimney to a precarious ledge, occupied by bellicose baboon, who, after much lip curling and smacking, turned, and with slow disdain, presented his rump and strolled back the way he had come.

It was too dangerous to reverse our route in the dark. We would have to bivouac on the narrow ledge. The problem was that we only had the fly sheet to shelter under if it rained and just two sleeping bags between the four of us. Mike and I wedged our legs into one and tied ourselves to the base of stunted tree, but in the middle of the night I awoke to find our ties had worked loose and the entrapped bottom halves of our conjoined bodies were suspended over a four hundred foot drop. I nudged Mike, who turned over, propelling us further out of our centre of gravity. It looked as if the villagers prophecies were about to be realised. But no. Gently I awoke him and moving very cautiously and hooking our arms around the tree without uprooting it, we managed to pull ourselves up. Although we strengthened our ties, we had no more sleep that night.

Mount Wehni was in the northern highlands of Ethiopia, not far from the ancient capital of Axum. It had not been climbed for four hundred years. Then it was a prison. The Emperor kept any challengers to his throne incarcerated in the huts on the top. The only way up and down the perilous pillar of rock was a wood and rock staircase, but that had collapsed. Cut off from supplies in their inaccessible eyrie, the prisoners and their guides perished.

In 1966, as a second year medical student with a yearning for adventure, I and a group of like-minded friends organised The Cambridge Medical Expedition to Ethiopia to carry out a survey on the prevalence of the debilitating parasitic illness, schistosomiasis, in areas of economic development. While we in Addis, we met a climber, Dave Prentice, who was on a personal mission to climb Mount Wehni and needed a few more foolhardy romantics to help him realise it.

We didn’t succeed. By midday on the second day, we were still a long way from the top. Reluctant to spend another sleepless night on the side of the mountain and concerned about our lack of water, we abseiled down.

The villagers welcomed us like spirits returned from the dead and prepared a banquet. There were large black glazed jugs of tej, a kind of honey mead, a bowl of we’t, a spicy lamb curry and plates piled high with injerra, a pancake made of the sourdough prepared from tef, a coase flour made from the seeds of a grass that grew in the highlands. We tore off pieces of injerra and used it to scoop up the we’t, sluicing it down with an infinite supply of tej. As the night wore on the villagers entertained us with songs and dances. We staggered back to our tent boisterous and happy at 3am. It was a feast, I shall never forget.

‘The Queen of Sheba’ is the one of a small number of Ethiopian restaurants in Britain. Situated on the corner of Fortess Road in Kentish Town, it is not posh, but it has character and the food in delicious. A strong aroma of incense greets you as you enter a dark candlelit interior. Plain wooden tables and chairs are placed around the small corner room. Amharic crucifixes, spears, shields, black earthenware jugs and lamps adorn the walls. A strange, haunting Ethiopian music is playing. This restaurant manages to recreate in Kentish Town, the atmosphere of a hut on the road to Lalibela. Time Out calls it a funky juxtaposition of ancient and modern.

‘The Queen of Sheba’ is is a family run business. Mother is the chef, father runs the accounts and the daughters, beautiful dusky temptresses with wild curly hair and high boots, serve at tables.

The menu features traditional Ethiopian classics, spicy meat or vegetarian we’ts, served on injerra, which has been cooked over steam and has the appearance and texture of a damp dish cloth but a delicious slightly acidic taste that complements the salty richness of the we’ts. There is also Kitfo, the Ethiopian equivalent of steak tartare, a delicious beetroot salad, spicy spinach and cottage cheese, and Kantegna, injerra toasted in butter and hot spices.

Ethiopian meals are rich in ceremony. The main course, which is often shared by 2 to 4 guests, is served on a large metal tray covered with a mesob, a conical rush cover, which is removed with a flourish to reveal a large flat disc of injerra covered in a variety of meat and vegetarian we’ts. More rolls of injerra are stacked up on the side. You eat with your hands, just as we did 40 years ago at the feast at Wehni. It is a pity they do not serve tej in Kentish Town, but the strong Ethiopian lager, Castle, has a good back of the mouth bitterness that works well with the acidic injerra.

There is no dessert, but it is essential to experience Ethiopian coffee.

Coffee is highly prized in Ethiopia. It was, according to legend, discovered in the highlands (see my blog, Frisky goats and dirty cats; the serendipity of coffee, 8th August, 2008). It is served with elaborate ritual. First the waitress arrives with freshly roasted coffee beans smoking on a metal spatula and presents it to each of us to smell. These are then taken away to be ground with cardamom seeds and a small piece of cinnamon bark and put in a glazed black coffee pot. Boiling water is added and the pot is placed on a rush ring on a metal tray together with two small cups without handles, a bowl of sugar and a small clay pedestal surmounted by a tablet of glowing charcoal upon which is smoking three small pieces of frankincense.

I sip my spicy coffee, waft the incense into my nose, close my eyes, hear again the haunting melody of the flute, the rhythm of the tabor, the excited chuckle of conversation and I am transported from north London to a balabat’s tukul on a ridge in the remote highlands of Ethiopia, where I celebrate with friends our miraculous deliverance from the spirits of Mount Wehni.

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