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Recordiad sain / Audio recording: Nesta Casetta-Wyer
Oral history recording with Nesta Casetta-Wyer. Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
00.05 Nesta talks about the Scampagnata in detail. There are races, activities, games, many Italian families get together. She took her children when they were young. As teenagers they wouldn’t go as much, yet now in their twenties they go back every year. Her children don’t speak Italian fluently. Her middle son does try more so than the other children, she isn’t sure why. He has always been very enthused by the Italian cooking and is now a chef. She says it isn’t because he is closer to his grandparents, he just is more interested in the culture. For him it is very positive yet her other children it is simply part of life. They all have dual nationality. Her middle son will say he is Italian, whereas her other two children will say that they are Welsh. In football they will support the winning side.
04.00 Nesta recalls going to Italy on holiday. She understood Italian, and remembers Italians shouting at her to make themselves understood. Even now, Nesta feels at home there when she returns. She stays with family and describes the town where they stay when they visit. It is small and friendly. There are vineyards on the outskirts of the town, they produce peaches. They would rest and eat a lot when they went to visit. Her father will help with work. They are seen as ‘The English’ when they go over to visit. Last year they visited and finally accepted that Wales was a separate country, with its own language. The Italians enjoy coming over to visit. She has vivid memories of the holidays in Italy even though they only went a few times. She remembers it as an adventure and describes the journey over. They would visit new places and then visit family. The social life there was very much ‘as a family’, everyone socialising together. She sees that as a very positive thing. Socialising happens anywhere and across generations. She recalls a street party, the children being allowed to stay up with the adults. She talks about the youth of Italy and how they socialise on the street, yet not in as threatening a way as youngsters over here.
12.00 She states that she would move over if it wasn’t that her husband and children didn’t speak Italian. She feels more at home in Italy. Nesta has always felt more Italian than English. She continues to talk about the food they would eat on holiday in Italy in detail. Last time she was in Italy the refrigerator repair man was even welcomed in for a meal. She tries to bring back that culture to Wales. When they were young she recalls the ‘Italian man’ coming to her grandparents’ house to buy Italian products. Now the Italian delicatessens are dying out due to supermarkets stocking Italian food now. 15.29 On holiday in Italy, religion was a very big element. They would often visit churches and stay in convents. She talks about the nuns they stayed with. Her sister would help them with chores around the convent. The family, welcoming atmosphere would extend to the church. She recalls visiting churches around Italy, particularly in Rome. They would join in festivals- one was a rock against tourism festival in Florence which they attended by accident. Apart from that they didn’t experience any negative feeling from the Italians. Nesta talks about religion here and describes the religious activities here with the family.
19.18 Now she maintains her link with Italian culture mainly through her father and his connections with the Italian community. She helps out at the Italian events. She is visiting Italy this year and always talks to her children. She helped with the Italian celebration of the republic day- mostly celebrated through food, dancing, talking together. She can’t put her finger on her favourite part of Italian culture, as it is so normal for her.
22.06 Welsh people think of Nesta as very Italian. They don’t think that she has any Welsh blood and ask where she is from. She talks about what people consider as ‘Italian’ about her. She talks about how her parents met. She imagines that it would have been very different for her mother to marry an Italian man, though she has never really considered that. She talks about her own wedding, which Italian family came over for. She doesn’t go back to Italy often enough, it has been seven/eight years since she went over. She hasn’t yet taken her children over due to money. She thinks they would find it very different. They have met some of the family, though language was a barrier for them. They went to Italian lessons but didn’t continue with it. Nesta was once fluent in Welsh, though she has lost it now. Her children learnt Welsh at school but didn’t continue with it. She is always drawn to the Italian side of her culture. She continues to talk about the Italian language- how she wishes her father had spoken to them in Italian. However, he needed to learn English at the time and it also wasn’t natural for him to speak Italian to them as he was used to making the effort to speak in English. She says she will try to learn Italian again.
29.13 When Nesta was growing up it was mainly food and her grandparents that were her link to Italian culture. Her grandparents never moved back to Italy. She thinks her grandmother would have liked to have gone back to live. She doesn’t know any Italians who have gone back, she thinks it is because cost of living is high. She doesn’t know very much about Italian politics, but uses her Italian vote after asking her father/ Italian family in Italy. She got automatic Italian nationality, as did her children, as can their children. Her husband is a Welshman. He enjoys the family aspect of Italian culture, and the food. She doesn’t consider the Welsh culture as very strong in Cardiff, and doesn’t consider it being brought into her home to any great extent. She talks in detail about the big differences between Italian and British culture are the family values, socialising across generations. She talks about British parents doing anything to ‘keep their children occupied’. She finally says that she sees it as a shame that the culture becomes more and more watered down. She wonders if she would be as involved in the culture if it wasn’t so much for her father, and wonders whether her children will be as involved after that