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Oral history recording with Agostino Crisaffi. 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 4 of 4 (AV 11384-11387)

00:00:01 The family rented small bits of land from a landowner. They worked with animals and used donkeys to work a machine that watered the land with sea water. Each person had a slotted amount of time to use the machine; he describes how the machine worked. Agostino finished his work and went to help his father in the farm in the evening. He lived in a house with two bedrooms with his mother and father and sisters. His sisters used Singer machines to do sewing work. They all brought money back to his mother to manage and look after the family.

00:13:31 Agostino describes the socialisation his town; the people would dress up smart on a Sunday, walk up and down, drink coffee and play cards or go to the cinema or dances in each others’ houses. They would look at girls though they weren’t allowed to go near them. They would go to church every Sunday; boys and girls would be sat on opposite sides, they go to look at each other. He prefers the outlook here. He would go back to Italy for holidays but not to live. He says his heart is here now and he is successful, but he can’t change his roots.

00:31:00 He also worked in a Rabaiotti restaurant and found work in the restaurant through a friend; his boss at the farm had treated him like a son and was very emotional yet wished him the best, in total he had worked there for seven years. He explains the history of the Rabaiotti family; they offered for him to go and work with them in London. It was a big business with a good social life with the restaurant with mostly Italian workers. He believes that food in Italian cafes made them different to the Welsh cafes and explains how he started his own business the Conti cafe.

00:44:45 His cafe was Conti cafe in Castle Street, which is still there today though run by someone else. Mostly British people would come into the cafe; he made mostly English food, Italian food came second. They opened the cafe 1960 and it was open six days a week. He says the key of his success was good customer service; he thoroughly enjoyed meeting different people there. Every Saturday at eleven o’ clock he goes back there to meet his friends; everyone still knows him as ‘Gus’. Though he worked hard he feels very lucky to have been able to own it and always stayed down to earth. Nowadays he feels Welsh but in his heart he can’t help still feeling Italian. He goes on to talk about the difference between the North and South of Italy and compares that difference to the English and Welsh people, who he finds more down to earth.