Sono Italiano? (I’m Italian?)

You need to have read the blog before this where I set the scene of the Italian community in South Wales. I am now going to recount the role they have played in shaping my life.  Due to my own Irish ethnic heritage I went to the local Catholic school with many of the children of these Italian families and for some strange reason, that I really don’t understand to this day, many of my best school friends were from the Italian community. Another friend of mine, who was also a contemporary, @FarSouthProject  has suggested that they brought a touch of Mediterranean colour to an otherwise monochrome  valley’s life in the drab  1970s.  Not too sure about that myself and I don’t think it was something I consciously thought about much. The Italians were sort of cool in school in as much as they all smoked and also, particularly as I hit my teens the dusky attractiveness of the Italian women did not escape my notice but they were part of the everyday landscape  and I had grown up with them so in many ways I didn’t see them in anyway as "foreign", they were just my mates Fausto, Luigi or Mario.

Looking back on our lives sometimes I think we impose an order to try and make sense of it as some sort of coherent story when in fact the reality is a much more cluttered mess of serendipity and happenchance.  While reflecting on my own history I identify one particular pivotal moment when I was about 16 which I don’t know if it is a construction of my own need to make this order but is central to this narrative I have constructed of my life. I can remember the event as clearly as if it were yesterday when one of my Italian friends said to me in the playground of our school” What are you doing over the summer holidays?”    I was on the verge of leaving school and replied I didn’t have any particular plans just probably bum about.   He suggested that we make our way across Europe and go and work on his grandmother’s farm in Italy. I had never been abroad before or much out of South Wales and I could just as easily have said no but I said yes and embarked on this journey to Italy with two of my Italian friends.

Bardi Castle

As recounted in  my previous blog the place that I traveled to was Bardi high up in the mountains of the Italian hinterland and many an adventure was had along the way but that may be in another blog.That trip was an education to me, I had never really drank wine or even coffee before and by the time I returned I was prodigious consumer of both.  More than that I did fall in love with Italy on that trip, not just the countryside or the people but the culture, the way of life, a different way of doing things and perspective that very much appealed to me and also it showed me that my friends were in fact “foreign” as they had access to this other world.

To bring this story to some sort of conclusion, (although I hope I have a few more years left in me yet)  I continued to visit Italy with my Italian friends in following years and unsurprisingly I was eventually lucky enough to marry a girl from one of these Italian families as well and we had our honeymoon in Bardi.  I continue my love affair with Italy and I can’t see it ending anytime soon.  My children have Italian names and I have ravioli and pannettone rather than turkey and  pudding for my Christmas dinner.

The French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu uses the concept of bricolage, which is the French word for DIY, to explain how he feels people don’t only just have culture thrust on them but rather construct it themselves from what they have around them.  I think that is what I have done with my relationship with Italy and Italians, OK I'm not Italian by birth but I have happily taken on aspects of those Welsh Italians that I grew up with and made it my own and long may it continue.

  

The Italians of South Wales or the Italians in the Rain

First of all with this blog let me thank all those people who have encouraged me with my blogging, you know who you are.  I don’t think I am a natural blogger, I only started it because some of my Twitter followers suggested it and I never cease to be amazed that people read my inane rantings but I am more than thankful that you do.

One barrier that I encounter in relation to blogging is finding a topic that I think people will be interested in and that is the case with the topic for this blog, but on reviewing my past blog I did notice that I had promised to recount my ongoing relationship with Italy.  This together with @edanaming who comes from an Italian family herself asking me about it has finally prompted me to commit my experiences to print. As my relationship with Italy covers some 40 years I have a lot to say I’ll split this blog in to two so not as to bore you too much, first I will tell you about the Welsh Italians and then I will tell you about my relationship with them.

You don’t need to have followed me for long on Twitter or read many of my blogs to know that I am a product of the South Wales Valleys. Now you may or may not know anything about the South Wales valleys or the people who live in them but you may be surprised that we are a pretty varied bunch. Prior to the industrial revolution the valleys of South Wales were one of the most sparsely populated areas of the United Kingdom so when coal mining and iron production developed in the area people had to move in to work those industries.  While some moved in from elsewhere in Wales, particularly the rural, agricultural West, others moved from further afield.  

My own surname is testament to the Irish contingent of this immigration but growing up in the valleys in 60s and 70s I was surrounded by immigrant families with their roots in Poland, Spain and of course Italy.  The Italians were an integral of any valley community at the time as illustrated by the character Bella Lasagne in Fire Man Sam. 

Every valleys community had their Italian café serving frothy coffee (cappuccino type concoctions made with Nescafe instant coffee), steamed pies (a strange South Wales delicacy),”singles” (cigarettes sold individually for the cash strapped) and of course that Italian staple, ice cream.

If you are interested in reading further about the Welsh Italians there is a good book out on the subject called “Lime, Lemon and Sarsaparilla” http://amzn.to/1LzIKad .

Another interesting fact that you probably don’t know about the Welsh Italian community is that the vast majority are from in and around one town Bardi in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy.  Over the years I have visited Bardi many times and it is an amazing place, a valleys town itself located in deepest rural Italy and where on market day on a Thursday in the main piazza you will hear Italian being spoken with a distinctive South Wales accent and where when I meet people there and I tell them I am from Merthyr the first thing they will say is “So you know the Viazzanis and the Fulgonis” which of course I do.

Another useful link if you want to know more about the Welsh Italians is The Amici Val Ceno http://bit.ly/1LkTVpc

Anyway, I digress, to be continued ….

A Little Boy From Merthyr Always, Always

“A little boy from Merthyr always, always” is a phrase well known  to many a person from that town that sits at the top of the Taff valley which people sometimes refer to as the capital of The Valleys. The phrase comes from a famous son of the town Dr Joseph Parry, composer of one of the greatest love songs the world has ever known, Myfanwy.  Parry like myself left the town as a teenager but as his famous phrase so succinctly sums up once you have the town in your heart and in your veins it stays with you always, no matter where you travel far and wide.

To some the town has less than a glamorous reputation, often exacerbated by negative media representations. Because of these negative images some might think that eternally carrying the town around with you in your bones might seem like some sort of proverbial ancient mariner’s albatross permanently weighing you down around your neck. Nothing could be further from the truth. I look at it as a resource that I always have with me that I can always reach for in my pocket if and when I need it, it is like the Swiss army knife of identities. Why?? Because it always offers you a grounding on what is important in life. I remember another local bard Idris Davies in his poem “The Day We Walked to Merthyr Tydfil” describing coming over the mountain from Rhymney on a cold winter’s night and looking down spellbound on the shimmering, twinkling facets of the house lights of that jewel of a town that is Merthyr. I know that view well and it is one that comes to mind when remembering the natural beauty that surrounds this town.

(This is where I was born; Gwaunfarren Hospital)

 Another resource that always stays with you when you are from the town is the wit and wisdom of its people,  which will always bring you back to the importance of family, community and friends. That spirit of the local people is steeped and is moulded by the proud history of this unique town.  From the Martyring of Tydfil through the kindling of the nascent industrial revolution to that hell on earth that were the local iron works that led to the internationally renowned Merthyr Risings, the boxing, boozing and brawling all associated with the town in the 19^th and 20^th Century reflect the strife and struggle that gives Merthyr people resilience, resolve and mettle that they use to rise to the challenges that life throws at us all.

So there we have it, what Merthyr means to this little boy who will be forever from the town, the people and the panache of the place is in my bones and in my blood and in my heart and soul. Sometimes those who have seen media representations of the town, such as those recently presented  by “Skint”, say to me “Well you’ve done well considering you come from such a deprived background”  I tell them I don’t feel I had a deprived upbringing at all and quite the opposite but the town gave me a particular resilience and bolshiness that I have always found has served me well to make my way in the world and proud of it I am.  
(Images from http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/)