Cultural connections
‘The only thing I miss is the light in the winter’
KINTYRE people sampled organic Italian coffee at a shared heritage day.
CAMPBELTONIANS reminisced about the decades when Italian café culture dominated Wee Toon life as they sampled biscotti and organic coffee.
Carradale woman Pamela Galbraith reprised an exhibition from 2011 last Tuesday and introduced the town hall audience to three of the most recent Italians to have settled in Campbeltown.
Andrea Belocchi, 55, a Lazio supporter from just south of Rome became the pharmacist at Boots six years ago and moved to the area with his wife Valentina Cataldi, 54.
Andrea has an English mother and soon took British citizenship.
Mr Belocchi said: ‘Italy was in crisis when I moved. I interviewed for Boots and was told that if I moved to Scotland they would put me up for three months in a hotel.
‘The only thing I miss is the light in the winter.’
Sayed Abo, 35, is a Bangladeshi Italian citizen who moved to Campbeltown in 2013 after 18 years in Trieste. He has two daughters and a third child due in October.
Mr Abo said: ‘Campbeltown is a very good place for families. People are very honest and many people stop and talk to me.’
Former grammar school art teacher Ronald Togneri spoke about the Italian cafés which have vanished from Campbeltown.
He said: ‘Anyone who came to the town in the 1970s will have remembered the three cafés. Our family came from Barga and I was offered the opportunity to get involved in the café but I was teaching.
‘My parents’ generation all went into the cafés and tended to marry Italians but my generation married into the community and became Campbeltonians.
‘We still think of ourselves as Scots/Italians.’
Irene O’Neil, Mary Wood, Liz Kelly and Margaret Wilson enjoyed a blether about days gone by.
Margaret Wilson recalled working in the Locarno for Jack Togneri while Mary Wood spoke about Leo Grumoli at the Royal known, then as Hell’s Kitchen.
The project is funded by Vital Spark and there are plans for a Polish evening.