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Oral history recording in English with Dora Marubbi. Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Part 2 of 4 (AV 11436 - 11439)

00:00:19 Dora describes her grandparents house in Molfetta, which her grandfather built. Much of her family lived together in the house and her father inherited it. She talks about the house where she grew up which was rented from a Doctor, on ‘Piazza Garibaldi’; at the front of the house was a park and from the back she could see the sea, and the old town. She lived with two twin sisters and a brother, Sergio. Her sister died at sixteen. She talks about growing up in the house, going to school, and memories of her brothers and sisters- it was quite a strict upbringing. She went to a nursery school in a convent. She left at 17 when she got engaged. She remembers friends from her High School; one also married a man from Wrexham.

00:10:40 Dora talks about meeting her husband. He was a sergeant in the army working as a mechanic for army tanks and Lorries in a nearby football ground. They met at a Sunday evening dance, to which she was invited by her mother’s friend, at the Sergeant mess. She describes the evening in detail. The second time she went to a dance her father and her brother went with her, she tells a story describing her father’s strictness and his reaction to the attention she received from her future husband. After that her he continued to visit her house and was favoured by her mother.

00:15:55 Dora talks about her husband and their wedding. She got married very young for the time and had her children at a young age. Her husband was born in Wrexham, to Italian parents and she was very connected to his relatives in the North. When asked about the differences between her home is the South and the North of Italy she explains that her father had a good position and the family were quite well of as were her father in law’s family. Her mother in law grew up in the mountains to a poorer agricultural family. Her father in law came over to the UK to join his brother who had moved over to open a garage in the 1880s yet they went on to have an ice cream shop and a fish and chip van. She starts to recount a story about their travels in the fish and shop van.