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 ….

The Day I Went to See Jeremy Corbyn

Let me get this clear right at the very beginning of this blog in that classic McCarthyite response ; I am not, nor have I ever been a member of  ….. any political party. Although I have been interested in politics since a teenager and I have flirted with various political organisations, I have never felt captured enough by any individual politician or party to actually join up as a member.  My political activism has always taken the form of organising activities and attending rallies and meetings .

 Although my politics has always been broadly left wing I always found my personal beliefs and opinions at odds with the likes of say the Socialist Worker Party or the Labour Party.  Although influenced by the ideas and writings of such great Labour stalwarts as Keir Hardie and Aneurin Bevan and I was lucky enough as a young man to be represented by that Labour legend S.O.Davies  party politics never had any allure for me. 

At election times I have tended to vote Labour as broadly I suppose I support them more than anyone else and up until the last general election I have always lived in a Labour constituency but on occasions I have voted for other parties.

In February this year I had attended the Welsh Labour Party conference in Swansea, not as a party member or supporter but because my work had sent me.  Ed Milliband had been there and quite a lot of the other Welsh Labour party hierarchy and it had struck me how staid, static and smug they were in their skins and quite confident at the time that they were poised to return to power.  Obviously, as we know now, that was not to be the case.

Following the 2015 general election I felt increasing disgust with the UK election system due to the blatant political machination of the media, who were obviously supporting particular powerful  elite interest groups and an electorate that seemed to be becoming increasingly self-cantered , isolationist and frankly xenophobic, hence the growth of dreadful parties such as UKIP. 

When the Labour party leadership contest started I was sort of vaguely aware of Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper but really had no idea as to who Liz Kendall or Jeremy Corbyn were.  If you had asked me at this point who I would have supported I would have unhesitatingly said Andy Burnham.  However, as the contest developed, although I have to admit it was not something I was following too closely, my opinions started to change.  I quickly started to realise that although I had no idea as to who Liz Kendall was her utterances seemed completely at odds to what I thought Labour was.  Obviously the party had changed quite a bit from last time I had paid any attention.

What really bought the difference to the candidates home to me was the welfare vote in July. Harriet Harman the interim leader of the party had said for Labour MPs to abstain???  WTF was that all about??? Yet another attack on the poor of this country and the leader of the supposed party of the working people of this country is saying to abstain??? At least one of the candidates Corbyn had the courage to vote against it.  That is the first time I remember him coming to my attention.  It was also the time that Burnham and Cooper started to go down in my opinion. Why, if they were against austerity did they not vote against this attack on the poorest in society?

Increasingly the name of Corbyn was being brought to my attention mainly through the attacks the other candidates and others within the party were directing toward him. What was it about this man and his politics that they were so afraid of particularly considering he had been an MP for so long? I did a bit of research and reading about his background and history and saw that he wasn’t the ordinary Oxbridge PPE party apparatchik, he was someone who had stayed true to his values all his life, something that seems incredibly rare these days.

I began to talk with friends, colleagues and on Twitter about the upcoming Labour party leadership contest and other people were picking up on the difference of the Corbyn campaign.  I said I had some sympathy for his approach and people urged me to sign up either as a member or supporter to vote for him.  I did seriously think about it but decided I would have been a hypocrite as I had never been involved in the party before and who was I to say who should be their leader.  My attitude was, let them pick their leader and then, if they pick Corbyn I might consider joining.  That, in itself was a pretty major change on my behalf as I had never ever considered joining a party before.

In August Jeremy Corbyn came to speak in South Wales.  He spoke at a number of venues but one was the Aneurin Bevan memorial in the Sirhowy Valley   This is an historic venue, where Nye Bevan used to hold open air meetings and somewhere right in the centre of my stomping ground.  I turned up at the meeting more than anything to see what the fuss was all about and because it was a nice afternoon to spend walking about the mountains of my beloved Welsh valleys.  I turned up early as I thought there would be a good turnout. Although I turned up a good three quarters of an hour early there was already a good crowd there and more than that there was a real carnival feel already.  The Red Choir were already there.  Being Wales we have a strong choral tradition and the Red Choir have been going years and they often perform at rallies and political meetings. People were around chatting and talking of the buzz of the Corbyn campaign.  People were catching up with friends and family and there was a real “valleys” feel to the event.

Then the man himself arrived.  No fanfare, no announcements, no hyperbole, he just walked in to the midst of us and started chatting to people, you know like a normal human being.  No minders, no security, no obvious hangers on he just walked in to the centre of the gathering and started chatting. I was stood chatting with a group of friends a couple of yards away and one of my group just went over and started chatting to him in a very natural way.  When I had been at the Labour party conference earlier in the year I just couldn’t have imagined that happening with Ed Milliband.

Corbyn then started to address the crowd, very unassuming, very naturalistic and not a particularly good public speaker.  He started to talk about the historic significance of the spot but more he talked about the late great Ray Davies. Ray was a local councillor, activist and character that I bet most local people in the crowd had come across at some time.  It was obvious that Corbyn knew Ray as a person, it wasn’t as if he had been briefed by one of his aides, he had connected with the terroir of the South Wales valleys, no mean feat in itself and something that cannot be faked.

The man talked, I wasn’t particularly impressed or overwhelmed but I just thought here is a genuine guy and that in itself, I am sorry to say in this day and age, is an impressive quality in a politician. He spoke, he took questions and there was discussion and debate. No spin, no managing the event, politics as politics should be, ideas not personalities. I was impressed by the approach, the social movement not by just the man himself. Although not a great orator the man spoke with passion and from the heart.  Without notes or script but with genuine conviction, when was the last time we saw that with all our staged managed politicians?

Well to cut to the chase dear reader that night when I got home I signed up as a Labour party supporter do you know why?? Because I could see hope, I could see a vision of a different way of doing things moving away from the bland, self-centred and self-obsessed politics that seem to have dogged us since the late 1970s. Although I had previously had reservations I wanted to be part of this opportunity to change things.

Since attending that meeting on the mountains of Sirhowy I have been increasingly disgusted by the antics of the other three candidates, including Burnham, in their personal attacks on Corbyn which he has had the good grace not to react to.  Who knows what the result will be??  I cannot believe the Labour Party machine will allow a Corbyn victory as there appears to be those in Labour who think they know better than democracy. This I believe is a real opportunity to change politics in the UK.  Even if people don’t think that Corbyn is the right person to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom he is the right person, indeed the only person on offer, to lead the opposition to this hateful destructive Tory government for the next five years.

This is my truth, tell me yours.

The Global Commodification of Care: A Rant

This blog post is going to be about the elderly care system in the UK, already I bet a load of you will stop reading. "I'm not old" "I don't need care" or it is seen to be so far off in to the future that it simply is not of interest. Stop and read on as what I am talking about is a crisis for our society because in the UK and The West in general we have an increasingly aging society and how we care for our elderly should be as much interest to people as the "war" on terrorism or drugs, global warming or global diseases but it just isn't.  The aging population and the looming crisis in our elderly care sector is the Cinderella  of social issues ignored for being frumpy and unglamorous.

How the elderly and infirm are cared for is a very good indication of what any society believes is important. Even for the young and fit, who may consider elderly care as something they would prefer not to think about, the increasing ageing population means we’ll be forced to consider, in a lot more detail, how we fund and organise it.  Care is important throughout all our lifetimes – from the care given by parents during pregnancy and infancy, through to the often guilt-ridden process of finding appropriate care for those same parents when they become elderly and infirm. How care is delivered and the quality of that care will increasingly come to the forefront of social policy concerns in the UK and elsewhere.

In Wales, the demand for elderly care will be further compounded by the fact we have some of the sickest communities in the UK. In areas like north Merthyr Tydfil, where research has shown people often start to have significant care needs from the age of 59, it’s possible people will need more than a decade of elderly care before the end of their lives.

At the same time, working in the care sector is, for many, a less than glamorous or aspirational occupation – many care workers work long hours for wages at, or near, the national minimum. Even in those areas of Wales with some of the highest levels of unemployment people may prefer not to take jobs in this sector, which I’m sorry to say, has low status throughout UK society. Additionally, the care home sector in the UK is increasingly part of a global industry which is often financed by offshore capital and feels that to be competitive and cost-effective it needs to import warm-blooded goods in the form of care workers from poorer areas of the world. Often you will find people from the Philippines or Eastern Europe in local care homes working long and arduous hours to provide care for our elderly people so they can support themselves and their extended families back home. These workers are often highly skilled, highly motivated and committed to providing good quality care, but managing care teams with different languages and different cultures presents its own challenges and problems that need to be overcome.

Care in general and elderly care in particular are not things that are held in high esteem in our society which seems to me to be increasingly beholden to the cult of the self over anything else. As outlined in this piece we are increasingly "farming out" the care of our elderly to economic migrants who are dragged to this country through poverty in their own and while they are here caring for our elderly who is caring for theirs at home. This situation is exacerbated and compounded through the UK's government's dogma of austerity which dictates the freezing and reduction of public budgets which in turn results in there being less and less public money being available for the care of our elderly.  We live in the 7th richest country in the world but from  my experience the care that is on offer is not as one would expect from such a rich nation.  Don't blame the government, don't blame the care workers, indeed I remember one Filipino care worker saying to me once " Why do you British treat your elderly so appallingly?"  It is you and I to blame that we live in a society that worships at the alter of youth, celebrity, wealth and beauty and have only disdain rather than veneration for the old and the elderly.

I am not overstating the case when I say elderly care is a disgrace in this country, basically it is invisible and nobody cares until there is some scandal of neglect and then a previously disinterested public sanctimoniously wags its finger at care workers the vast majority of whom are trying to do the best job they can while being under resourced, underpaid, under valued and who are often immigrants trying to support a family back in the land of their birth. People passionately defend the NHS but social care is as important if not more so. The British public recently voted into power a Conservative government on a ticket of further austerity measures. Such austerity measures will further impact on the poor state of our elderly care system but hey who cares, that's democracy for you :-( 

Reflections on a City Of Lights: Down and out in Pentrebach and then in Paris

"Tour Eiffel 360 Panorama" by Armin Hornung - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tour_Eiffel_360_Panorama.jpg#/media/File:Tour_Eiffel_360_Panorama.jpg

Paris; getting there  in heart and mind

A friend of mine who is in her late twenties recently said to me she was going to Paris for the first time and as she knew I had been on a recent visit asked me if I had any recommendations of places she could visit. As soon as she said it I felt a twinge of jealousy almost, resentment even, that she would have all the wonder and excitement of discovering and exploring that city for the very first time.

It brought back vivid memories to me of how I had first encountered Paris as a 16  year old backpacker, some forty years ago now. I was straight out of the Valleys of South Wales and had never been abroad before and had only once previously visited London, for a weekend when I was 13. If ever travelling was an education that trip of mine as a 16 year old to Paris and then on to elsewhere in Europe was a graduation on a grand scale.  Recently my father who is now in his late eighties and suffering from early dementia said to me “I remember that fist time you want to Europe, you came back a different boy than the one who went”

Since that first trip of mine back in the 1970s the city has changed a lot and if anything these days is a bit less uniquely “French” and is now more a globalised city, much like anywhere else in the early 21^st Centenary.  There are things I miss about the old Paris, such as the   little three-wheeler Nicolas delivery vans plying the streets delivering wine in much the same way milk used to be delivered in the UK, but there are still many wonders in that city of light so I thought I would share in this blog a few of my own thoughts of places to visit based on experience.

"Tour Montparnasse seen from Arc de Triomphe" by Ввласенко - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tour_Montparnasse_seen_from_Arc_de_Triomphe.jpg#/media/File:Tour_Montparnasse_seen_from_Arc_de_Triomphe.jpg

Tour Montparnasse:

 I don’t think this is all that well known by many British tourists and is certainly not as famous as that other tower in the city but you will get the best few of Paris from here, better than Sacre Cour and better than the Eiffel Tour.  People say it is the best view of Paris as it is the only place in Paris you cannot see the Tour Montparnasse :-/ which is not, it has to be said, the most aesthetically pleasing of buildings, but the view is second to none, look.

 "Eiffel Tower from the Tour Montparnasse, 1 May 2012 N1" by Getfunky - Flickr: Paris. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eiffel_Tower_from_the_Tour_Montparnasse,_1_May_2012_N1.jpg#/media/File:Eiffel_Tower_from_the_Tour_Montparnasse,_1_May_2012_N1.jpg

The Eiffel Tour

This is also obviously worth a visit.  There are three different stages or platforms to the tower and if you are feeling energetic you can walk up to the first stage and even the second stage which is fun and a little exhilarating.  At the tower though watch out for long queues and pickpockets . :-( A walk I would recommend from here which is not too long and takes you through some of the key sights is start at the tower up to the Trocadero up Avenue Kléber to the Arc de Triomphe then all the way down the Champs Elysee to the Place de la Concorde ( or Place de la Revolution as I still prefer to call it). If you carry on if you fancy a longer walk you will get to the Louvre. The Tower is also a good place to access the  Bateau Mouche (Fly Boats) these are tourist boats that go up and down the Siene but again they are another very good way to see the sights of the city and not so strenuous as walking.

"Trocadéro canons à eau 2" by Siren-Com - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trocad%C3%A9ro_canons_%C3%A0_eau_2.jpg#/media/File:Trocad%C3%A9ro_canons_%C3%A0_eau_2.jpg

 Chatelet: A Favorite Walk

A favourite Paris walk of mine is to start off at one of my best places in the city; Chatelet – Les Halles, (Easy to get to on the Metro) this is a little like the Paris version of Covent Garden, an historic commercial centre of the city and where you can get everything that makes for the Paris experience good food, coffee, wine and somewhere to sit and watch the world go by.

"RuePierreLescot" by Minato ku - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RuePierreLescot.JPG#/media/File:RuePierreLescot.JPG

Start off and take in Chatelet them walk toward the Pompidou Centre which again is worth a look and a quick visit depending what is on there.  After you pass the centre turn right and you will be able to walk to the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) which will be straight in front of you, where there is normally some sort of exhibition outside then if you continue straight on you will reach the famous and awe inspiring Notre Dame Cathedral.    If you are down that area another place worth a visit is Sainte Chapelle in the Conciergerie which has some amazing stained glass windows if that is what you are in to.

"Sainte-Chapelle-Interior" by Michael D. Hill Jr. - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sainte-Chapelle-Interior.jpg#/media/File:Sainte-Chapelle-Interior.jpg

Anyway, that is enough to be going on with, main thing with Paris is take in the city not just the sights because sometimes the sights can get in the way of seeing the real city.

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/)