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

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.