Cafe Society...

...chippies, icecream vans, pies and Welsh-Italians

Sadly Hotpots is no more - the lease came to an end and they decided not to renew.
For earlier thoughts on cafes in Aberkenfig and South Wales and the delights of Hotpots see earlier post:
 Hitchin's, brilliant breafasts and the old sweetshop

The post got a response from a descendant of Mr Moruzzi who used to run the cafe in the square when I was growing up. As said in earlier post - this was a typical Welsh/Italian caff as described in "Lime, Lemon and Sarsparilla"
Lime,lemon and sarsaparilla

[Just had a quick google and discovered the first body found washed up after the sinking of the Andora Star was a Moruzzi:
wiki SS Arandora Star

This was the ship transporting "prisoners of war"  where many British Italian men lost their lives and is featured in the book.]

Anyway - back to caffs - What I really remember Mr Moruzzi for is his ice-cream! He made it himself and it was wonderful.  And in the days before freezers in the sixties and early seventies ice-cream did seem more special. There were Lyon's Maid and Walls and the icecream vans - and that was it. These were the days when whippy ice-cream had started and it was popuar with ice-cream vans - although I do remember an ice-cream van called "Langford's" that also did nice ice-cream.

Moruzzi's was also somewhere you could buy a bar of chocolate on a Sunday evening. As said earlier - I never hung out there, but was always impressed by those that did.

I love visiting traditional Welsh/Italian (Italian/Welsh?) caffs in South Wales and here are still a few around in valleys towns and villages. And Fulgoni's restaurant in Porthcawl still make their wonderful ice-cream but whether they make it or not now depends on the weather ! In the summer you can buy it at Rest Bay as well as their restaurant and I often drag friends to Porthcawl for a Fulgoni's!

Over on an Aberkenfig Facebook discussion site, "You know you're from Aberkenfig..." all sorts of cafe memories have emerged resulting from a memory of "steamed pies":
 facebook: You know you're from Aberkenfig...

I do remember that the bottom chip shop run by Mario Crucci used to heat pies by dropping them into the chip fat. I think before microwaving the top chippie had a hot cabinet but would also do fat dunking on request.

Another Proustean moment - butter wrapper...

Was roasting a chicken today and didn't have much oil so basted with combination of oil and butter.

Unusually I had solid butter as I'd bought for cooking - usually use the spreadble type in a tub.

Went to check chicken and it seemed a little dry so added last of butter  and as it was last of pack smeared it on with wrapper and suddenly remembered my Mum sometimes cooking poultry with the butter wrapping over breast of bird to keep moist so did the same.

Sadly I can't do my roasties like hers, but frozen roasties smeared with fresh cooking juices are pretty good!

When she first came to Wales (from Egypt) my Mum nearly caused an International Incident. Dad had a Yorshire friend who went on about the delights of Yorshire pudding. The first time my Auntie Gladys made them for my Mum she was really disappointed by their ordinariness after the build-up - Not the way to get on with your new sister-in-law!

Hop-scotch, gambos and levitation

Loved John's comments on the Opies and kids' rhymes. I love all that stuff and have blogged about some I remember:
 omp-pomp-pee-and-lousianna

I went to junior school in Aberenfig, but when I went to Secondary school I was with children from Bridgend and Maesteg and realised they had different games, game words and rhymes despite being only two and eight miles away. When I went away to college in the big city - Cardiff(!) - a whole twenty miles away I found more differences. What I thought of as aeroplane hopscotch was simply hopscotch and the rhymes for playing two balls or skipping were endless. I particularly liked:
??????? had a fright
In the middle of the night
She saw a ghost eating toast 
halfway up a lampost

And there were those naughty rhymes where you nearly/sort of swore:
Lily was in the garden playing with the cat
Down came a bumble bee and stug her on her...
Twice she went to the doctor's...

While I find it hard to remember poetry or lyrics to songs I can recite the whole of the piece of filth above!

The word gambo has caused me great excitement - I should get out more! - it was what we called home made go-carts in Aberkenfig but were buggies or go-carts in Cardiff. The word actually came up on"call my Bluff" many moons ago.
 Wiki -Call My Bluff
The definition was a hay cart in the West Country.
Further excitement was caused when I saw the word on a cart wheel in the wonderful coracle museum in Cenarth in Cardigan:
 coracle museum.


 I wonder how many people attempted the levitation thing where you chanted to try and make a person weightless and the group attempt to pick the person up from a prone position supporting them with two fingers of each hand. There was a variation to make someone fall back as well where you pretended to make holes in their back and then thread and pull an imaginary string... Universal or just Aberenfig I wondered, but - as so often - the wonderful Wiki provided an answer:
wiki Light as a feather, stiff as a board

Life's Necessities...

This is the view from my back garden.

Had been snowed in for a few days - not dramatically, but access to motorway was closed and my car was under a blanket of snow. Decided to have a walk around the village and surrounding area and it was all very picturesque as expected.


The local foodshops were open and had bread and milk - there'd been panic buying in South Wales supermarkets - and to my amusement and delight  the sex shop and gun shop were also open - Other businesses were closed but you could still get sex and guns in the village!

Will post more pics, but having problems with where pictures are being placed - still - you get the picture..

Front garden and my car

View of my street

The snowmen!

I'll post pictures on new entry.

Family Stuff and History

I'm now in touch with my cousin on my father's side (Jeanette and her husbnd Ian) and discovered several errors in my Auntie Gladys's version of the Gunston history which I will correct.

One of my  Australian cousins, Jacqui (my mother's side) is visiting again in September so I hope to  confirm some stuff when I see her. On our Maltese side there is the scary Greek Great Grandmother -who I resemble! - My sister commented that we have no idea of her background. There must be a tale of how she - or her family - came to Malta from somewhere Greek....

Diasporas are fascinating. I only got as far as Cardiff (20 miles!) and then came back - for some people that is quite adventurous, but nothing compared with Malta to Egypt and then to Australia like my maternal Grandparents. When I was in Cardiff I used to joke that I'd travelled 20 miles and got culture shock - it was quite true though.

A potted historie...

I was at secondary school with a girl whose Grandfather was from Aberkenfig. I asked her to find out what he knew about my family. This is what I learnt. My Grandfather married a woman from the coaltip (Llanelli) and my Dad went away in the forces and came back with a foreign woman (Maltese, from Egypt - it's complicated...!)

I love the summary of our history - I guess not the most common background for an Aberkenfig family...

Family History: My father's family

Several years ago I asked my Auntie Gladys (Dad's sister) about her family and wrote this based on what she said and bits I knew. The stuff about my grandparents is based on what my Gran told Gladys:

 

Alice Maud Llewellyn and Hubert Gunston were my paternal grandparents

Hubert was from Gloucester and ran away when he was 13. He went to sea and lied about his age. He had brother Ernie who was a postman.

Hubert was known as ‘Fiery Bert’ and was small but fierce.

Bert took lodgings with May Pullman in Llanelli.

Alice Llewellyn was from Llanelli and told her daughter Gladys that she dreamt of a man with brass buttons and a twirly moustache and it seemed that that is what she got!

Alice had brother Will who was a blacksmith. Brother Dai was lay preacher and sister Emmy was tailoress.

Bert  was possibly a wagon repair man. He was with Steelworks and may have been an inspector. Bert quarrelled a lot.

Bert and Alice moved on to Swansea, then Aberkenfig.

Lived at no. 31 or 21 the moved to 11 Dunraven Street.

Their children were:

Florence May

Harold William

Ernest Reginald (my father)

Gladys Elizabeth

Florrie’s children were Shirley, Rita and Jeanette:

Shirley married Ken and their children were Julie, Steve and David

Rita married Cliff and had Wakely, Guy and Victoria

Jeanette married Ian and their children were  Graham, Richard and Stuart

Harold and Gladys never married nor had children.

Ernest (my father) married Daria Molinari and had three children: Diane, Sheilagh and Irene.

The top picture is my maternal Grandmother with Harold as a baby. Harold was (we thought) the eldest, but apparently not. Because I've been writing  about Aberkenfig and came across the 1911 census website I decided to check out the family presence in 1911
I knew my Grandparents were living here and found them as expected - but also what would have been my uncle - named Bert after his father -  born in 1910! He didn't survive to overlap with my father and known siblings as far as I am aware - but what a surprise. Of couse child mortality was high in those days. I know that my Molinari grandparents lost a little girl - Emily - but didn't know about a lost Gunston...

This is the link for census: 

1911census

 The second picture is my father (sat on the right)  looking amazingly cool when having your photo taken was an event!

  

Tick and Tallymen - Credit and Callers in South Wales

Further to my earlier post on Christmas clubs and other forms of credit I've found the info on tally men.
This is the post:
Hitchins,brilliant breakfasts and...

Tallymen and credit in the Valleys feature  in the Bernice Rubens novel "Brothers". She lived in Cardiff and has a real feel for life in South Wales shown in "Brothers" and other novels.
Brothers by bernice Rubens

This is what she wrote:

Pavel was a credit draper. This was a trade most favoured by those immigrants who did not have a particular skill. Its great advantage was that it required little initial capital and even that could be credited. The trade itself was concerned with the sale of clothing to lower income groups at the minimum payment of a shilling a week, and the main hunting-ground for such clientele was the Welsh mining valleys. The tallyman would buy his goods on credit from the wholesale merchants, and make the rounds of his customers.The profit margin was narrow, the working hours long and arduous, but it already provided Pavel with a living, as it did many of his 'Landsleit'.*  Some of them, after a year or two, had bought their own houses, and some, like Max, had used the profits to set up a shop of their own...


...The job required little skill except that of book-keeping. Its major demand was on physical strength and endurance. Pavel set out on his journey encumbered with large parcels. He would travel by train to the central town of the valley, and from there would walk or wagon along the roads to the outlying villages and hamlets. It was back-breaking work, and especially hard in winters. But there was always a welcome in the valleys and the great bonus of the trade was the friendship and warmth of the mining communities. 

* a Landsleit was an  immigrant Jew sponsored and supported by a fellow countryman and enabled  to make a fresh start in a foreign country after leaving Russia

 In the sixties and seventies Blooms and other such credit salesmen travelled by van and would have an array of stuff with which to tempt and would take orders for specific items as well. This along with Provident cheques, catalogues, Christmas clubs and such were how people in Aberkenfig and other villages managed their budgets and accessed the limited credit available to them. Of course Provident and the Christmas clubs were saving schemes rather than the credit of the catalogues and tally men, but all seemed to make buying everyday goods and luxuries more painless for those on tight budgets.

Omp Pomp Pee and a Lousianna...

...My black cat can play the pianah...

Been thinking about street games played wnhen I was a youngster. The above was part of the rhyme for a very imaginatively named game of "Kerb or Wall" This was the rhyme and and counting/choosing rhyme for person to compete:
Omp Pomp Pee and a Lousianna
My black cat can play the pianah
 Omp Pomp Pee,
Stick him up a tree
Kerb or wall?
Kerb or wall? 
Person picked would choose kerb or wall and race against the picker. Race by chosen would be to wall (if chosen), back and then to kerb and back. Chooser would run to kerb (if not chosen) and back, followed by wall and back. How sophisticated is that?! 


I was fascinated by kids' games and also the differences between language and games in different areas.The Opies have written extensively on this:
Lore andLanguage of Schoolchildren

In children's books, kids played "tag" and in Aberkenfig we played "touch". Touch came in a variety of forms: off ground, twty down, tunnnel and aeroplane to name a few. When one was off ground or twtying (crouching down) one was safe from being touched/tagged/caught/losing. In tunnel touch one became static, but could be released by someone crawling through one's legs...

I was also very taken with the idea of respite words varying according to one's location - something mapped out by the Opies.  In Aberkenfig if one needed a break in a game one asked for "bars". Cree and Pax I believe are most common and as "barley" is used, "bars" is likely to be a version or corruption of it. Just had a google and discovered the term for such words is "truce term":
wiki on truce terms

I shall write more about childhood games in Aberkenfig and surrounding areas again.

No sex please, we're Welsh...

As you know if you have visited my delightful village or read previous posts, there is a sex shop in Aberenfig which causes me much amusement. I was chatting about this to a neighbour (as you do!) and discovered that a very nice man working in te shop when it had its protester used to provide her with a cup of tea - How sweet (and slightly mad) is that?!

ps If you've not already found out -  clicking on pictures gives a bigger version and you can magnify further if you want to read the article.

Grilled cheese, poached eggs and kitchen suppers...

 Just read an article about the language of meals and their  social history and meanings
kitchen suppers, francis maude and Rachel Cooke
It seems that even the word "meals" is "non-U"!

"Supper" seems to be one of those words that is  completely working class, posh or pseudo-posh depending on what you eat and what you call your other meals. Not sure how "supper clubs" and of course the most famous one - "The Last" Supper" - fit into this...







In Aberkenfig in the sixties and seventies to my knowledge and recollection,  the meal in the middle of the day was definitely "dinner" and those that toook it at school needed dinner money rather than lunch money. 

On weekdays we'd come home to "tea" which was another substantial meal taken quite early after school and work. This meant that one often got peckish after about nine and that was when the movable feast that was supper took place. All meals were taken at the kitchen table except supper which was eaten in the sitting room in front of the TV.

My younger sister and my father were rather fond of  grlled cheese. This was like cheese on toast without the toast - slices of cheese just grilled on an enamel plate. My father added HP sauce to his, but Irene ate it as it was.

my favourite supper dish was poached egg(s) on toast - preferably with a firm white and runny yolk. I'm still fond of a poached egg and will settle for a more set yolk that risk the dreaded runny white! I've experimented with various ways of helping the egg to set, but still prefer a freeformed egg cooked in a pan of water with a good slosh of vinegar in it and sometimes some salt as extra insurance against an over-floaty white. Somehow egg poachers are not the same... I like to spread the egg over my toast and sprinkle with an obscene amount of black pepper, then eschew cutlery and eat with my fingers.

Sundays were - and still seem to be - different as most people have a significant meal in the middle of the day - Sunday lunch or dinner. As a youngster I loved the idea of a "high tea" on Sunday evening with sandwiches and cake all served at the table and looking my idea of  a meal from books. Tinned fruit and icecream elevated this even further. Irene and I didn't like tinned fruit, but loved the syrup from the tinned pears and peaches that the rest of the family ate. This was before we had a freezer and the block of icecream would be purchased from the only shop in the village to be open on a Sunday and bought wrapped in newspaper and borne home in some excitement.

Of course, nobody fully understands and expounds the significance of tinned fruit as the late and great Dylan Thomas in "The Peaches"
See below for summary and response to the short story:
"The Peaches" in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

I still love high tea/ party food/buffet type meal with basics of sandwiches and cakes with additions of sausage rolls, pasties, crisps, nuts etc.

Illicit Bluebell Picking and May Altars

Listening to The Archers I realised it was May Day and memories of May Altars and picking armfuls of bluebells came flooding back.

Many Catholic (and other) churches have an altar dedicated to Mary, but there is also a tradition to have a home altar to her in "her" month, which is May.

Info on May Altars from "Catholic Fire"

As a youngster, I would turn a chest of drawers top into my May Altar, with a statue and some candles and said bluebells. I did try Mayflower (hawthorn) which seemed appropriate, but didn't last.

An elderly neighbour also told me it was unlucky, but I was not particularly superstitious.  Just looked up hawthorn and was reminded of the Joseph of Aramathea connection and the famous Glastonbury thorn:
about the hawthorn/Mayflower

I'd also put violets and other flowers on the May Altar, to complete it, but they didn't last as well as the bluebells. The forestry as we knew it had glades of the flowers as well as ones growing on the roadside along the path and Dee Greepo/Ty Cribwr Hill.

Seems strange that picking wild flowers didn't get a second glance then and was encouraged in a hymn:

"O Mary We Crown Thee." (Copyright 1938 St. Basil Hymnal)

Refrain:
O Mary we crown thee
With blossoms today
Queen of the Angels
Queen of the May.
Bring flowers of the fairest
From garden and woodland
And hillside and dale.
 Extract from "Catholic Fire" as above

Of course I wouldn't pick wildflowers nowadays and enjoyed the bluebell woods in the Forest of Dean last year. The bluebells were out very early this year though and I saw some in March in the grounds of the "castle" at Southerndown - they were out at the same time as the daffodills whch was rather nice. There is this lovely enclosed garden which is great fun.
Information on Dunraven House/ "castle" at Southerndown

Hitchin's, Brilliant Breakfasts and the Old Sweet Shop...

My friend and colleague Graham was visiting me and around interruptions by Welsh Water and an Irish gentleman trying to sell me new guttering we decided to go for lunch.

In the "  old days" we had Moruzzi's - a typical "Bracchi" Welsh-Italian caff as wonderfully evoked in this book by Colin Hughes.
Lime,lemon and sarsaparilla
Mr Moruzzi made his own icecream and it was very cool to hang around the caff when I was young, but I was never that cool!

Now we have two cafes and I've visited both. One is in the square - Catrina's - and there is  Hot Pots at the top end of the village, on the way to Tondu.

Treat of the day was Hot Pots - I had a brilliant breakfast and Graham had a veggie curry jacket potato with a big pot of tea between us. Hot Pots is what was Hitchin's- a grocery store and off licence, when one could only buy booze from the pub or offie - now there are three general grocers all selling alcohol and it's hard to believe that buying alcohol was less easy a few decades ago.

I was convinced that Hot Pots had been the strange sweet shop I remembered from my childhood, but it seems it was next-door and is now a house. Hot Pots has great windows and pillars and lots of pictures and Aberkenfig memorobillia as well as fab food! To my surprise and pleasure my ex-neighbour walked in while we were there. Christine lived several doors up from me and was part of the general gang of kids who all hung out together in the sixties. She's recently returned to the village  and filled some gaps for me re people and places.

Later I was chatting to Steven my neighbour (another of the gang who has been living back in our street for some time) and talking about shops old and new when we got onto "Chistmas clubs" and catalogues. Like many predominantly working class places, saving money with a local shop for your Christmas booze and/or food was quite common. As was getting clothes and presents from catalogues for which you had a "club" as well. I also recall the "Provident" where you would pay regularly into a fund for "cheques" which you used in cetain shops.

Steven and I were also reminiscing on all the callers and deliveries in those days. As well as the Provident, there was "Blooms" of Cardiff  with his van a cornucopia of  household goods and clothes and most things you requested - a more modern version of the old tally men* and another way of getting credit before our flexible friend.
Looks like they're still going and moving with the times:
Blooms of Cardiff


Insurance men and the rent man were also regular callers as were the bakery van (the Co-operative Society I think) and Yeoman's the veg man and a fish seller I seem to remember as well...

It was all very busy and very like Peter Hall's account of  Vanmen and Collectors:
 Dragged up in the West Riding: My Mother


* I've read about tally men in a Bernice Rubens novel - possibly "Brothers". Tally men were itinerant sellers and in the Welsh valleys I believe they were often Jewish. Will write more if and when I find something...

Just been googling...again!

Found this site which sells photos but has place for memories, which make interesting reading.
http://www.francisfrith.com/aberkenfig/
Astonishing to think that such a small village had a department store! I too remember the Co-operative store at the top of the village and Lewis's who delivered the milk.
When I got to Cardiff in the 70s I was amazed that  milk was bought in cartons from the corner shops - they did have milkmen as well, but didn't really fit in with student life!
In Aberkenfig we had milk delivered and if we ran out we'd walk to "The Dairy" - which was the Lewis's home opposite Pandy school. I remember you just knocked the door and Mrs Lewis would walk over to the yard and get a bottle of milk and sell it to you from there. 

The Delights of Aberkenfig...

As said - I decided to move back to Aberkenfig. Being quite bright and educated I chose the 20th December for the move and promised my sister to cook her Christmas dinner in the family home! I did it, but I still have stuff in boxes and Ikea storage furniture un-bought at the end of March!

I do however have an idea for a new project - I want to write a book about Aberkenfig! I have a series of anecdotes I trot out, because the changes are hard to believe and fascinating. I once wrote a piece for Wiki which got "wikified" and poshed up, but these are the bones, personalised and updated:

Aberkenfig has become a somewhat mythical place in recent years due to its connection with the M4 , and its acquisition of: an excellent Chinese restaurant, a sex shop and a retail outlet that sells guns. There was once nothing more exotic than the Co-op, Aberkenfig's very own 'Bon Marché' store, two chip shops and a café. Like all good South Wales villages, families with an Italian history ran one of Aberkenfig’s chip shops and its cafe. The cafe was owned by Mr. Morruzzi; one of the names known for such establishments throughout South Wales. Mr Crucci (known to one and all as Mario) ran the 'bottom' chipshop. The top chipshop changed hands several times and did not have such a consistent history.

Aberkenfig is a location that was difficult to place in the existing geographical definitions. It was certainly a village but not like the villages in stories, as most inhabitants did not work the land. While it was industrial it was outside the area where most men were miners. 'Up the road' in the adjoining Tondu were a defunct brick works, a National Coal Board training centre and a telephone exchange as well as a railway station. Aberkenfig was also not of the valleys but 'en route' to them. It was well served by buses going to Brynmenyn and Bettws as well as the more exotic and slightly distant destinations of the Garw valley, Llangeinor, Maesteg and Wyndham. These were places many inhabitants (myself included) would have had no reason to visit but could seem more 'Welsh' and 'valleys' than Aberkenfig when I was growing up.

According to an article in the Glamorgan Gazette Aberkenfig was once the 'Entertainment Mecca of the Valleys'. Sadly the cinema turned bingo hall is long defunct but Aberkenfig still boasts a lovely traditional and well-kept 'Welfare' hall. This once practically all white South Wales village has, however, become an alternative source of modern 'leisure activity' - that of eating out and taking away. As well as the modestly famous Chinese restaurant it boasts a second Chinese restaurant, an excellent Indian eatery and four additional Chinese and one Indian (at the back of a pub!) take-away establishments.

The said sex shop had its very own one-lady-protest movement who stood patiently outside with her 'Ban the filth' placard.

The old Catholic church hall where children once enjoyed crisps and pop while their parents played bingo is now a centre for Muslims, which is a marvellous development for the once more homogenous area. Sadly they have suffered some vandalism, but good to see the place put to good use. The old cinema is now a thriving church with an active social welfare programme. St Roberts Catholic Church and The Church In Wales St.John's are still going strong, but both now lack their own Parish Priest or Minister and share with other parishes.

The Post Office has recently been refurbished and there are a couple of convenience stores as well as a variety of shops pubs and clubs. Buses still go through Aberkenfig, but far less now that the M4 also resulted in a bypass and it is no longer necessary to travel via aberkenfig for Brynmenyn and Bettws or the the once-mythical Garw valley, Llangeinor, Maesteg and Wyndham.

I have visited the library (we have a great one!) and found no book on Aberkenfig, although they have pictures and some pieces written by individuals. I think the book must be written...

I shall post memories old and new and would love to hear from others...