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Recordiad sain / Audio recording: Armando Cugno
Oral history recording with Armando Cugno. Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
00:00:01 Thanks to the Allied occupation of his town he was able to practise his English, so when he moved to Wales he was often used as an interpreter between the Welsh and the Italians, in particular linked to the law. Receiving the Maestro del Lavoro from the Italian Ambassador in London was one of the proudest moments of his life.
00:15:51 He was also welcomed by the Mayor of Cardiff which made him feel very honoured and more integrated in the Welsh community. When asked if he feels at home when he goes back to Sicily he replies that things have changed a lot. The town itself has changed as much as the people in it. Now Armando is integrated and is used to the Welsh way of life and due to that every time he goes back he feels a bit of a stranger.
00:21:15 The interviewer asks Armando how he met his wife and he recalls the first time he saw her crossing the road in his hometown. He whistled at her and an old woman said to him: You’re not in England now, here they’ll cut your feet off for that!’. Following that their families met to decide if it was a good match, fortunately the answer was yes. Armando left for Wales again but wrote to his fiancée every week and finally bought her a wedding dress and returned to Sicily to get married. They got her a passport so that she was able to move to Wales as well. 00:27:45 Armando worked hard throughout his life. The British people, having won the war, didn’t want to take on heavy work and recruited Italians to do so. Armando worked for an oil company for eight months, twelve hours a day. This hard work enabled him and his wife to buy a house in Wales. The only thing that upset Armando was not having seen his daughter grow up as he was away from the family for long periods at a time. When the tinplate factory was closed, Armando was fifty two and he managed to find work as a door man for the British Telecom offices. He got on very well there and was very appreciated by the Directors and Managers there.
00:42:40 The interviewer then asks Armando about religion and he replies that it has always been an important part of his life, since he was a child. He remembers religious festivals in Sicily like Corpus Cristi (Corpus Domini), and the Sacramento where all the children dressed in white and performed a parade. Those traditions don’t exist any longer as the number of Catholics has diminished. Armando explains that even today he tries to maintain some Italian traditions, like home-made wine for example, made every year with Italian grapes.