Snapshot: Nonna’s remarkable journey from Padova
This is a photograph of my nonno and nonna, Massimo Clemente Spigolon and his wife, Elena, nicknamed Neni. They lived in Padova, Italy and had 11 children, 10 of whom lived to a ripe old age, three until their late 80s and four until their 90s – proof of the benefits of a Mediterranean diet.
Zio Arnaldo fought in Russia in the second world war and was given shelter by a Russian family; Zia Carla was one of several brides who were married by proxy at St Mark’s Basilica, Venice, as their fiances were fighting in north Africa; the two youngest sisters, Rita and my mum, Graziella, each married British soldiers – best mates Eric and Roy, my dad – who fought in north Africa and then through Italy until they reached Padova.
But it is my nonna, Elena, whose story I want to tell. Family legend has it that Nonna was of aristocratic birth and married beneath her when choosing Nonno. He was a successful tailor whose business was ruined in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash. With a large family to feed, Nonna took in ironing to make ends meet; Mum often described how Nonna, without benefit of an electric iron, would use the old hand iron, warmed on the kitchen stove, to press linen, sheets and curtains on the table while singing arias from Tosca, as her sister Graziella (my mum) helped fold the ironing ready for collection.
Most remarkable was Nonna’s journey alone from Padova to England in 1948 to be with her youngest daughter when she gave birth to her firstborn. Aged 68, and never having left her home town before, she embarked on the very long steam train journey from Italy to France, then the boat across the Channel and onwards by train to King’s Cross where she was met by Dad who drove her to the Yorkshire mining village of Bentley where he and Mum had rooms. Nonna couldn’t speak a word of English but she and Sam, the owner of the house, managed to get along, playing cards and communicating by gesture and facial expression. On 7 August Nonna helped to bring me into the world. A short while later, Dad took her to Manchester to visit her younger sister Rita, whose first child, Anita, had been born exactly one week earlier on 31 July.
I met Nonna three times after 1948 when Mum and I went to Padova; when I was 13 and she was in her 80s, she was knocked down on a pedestrian crossing and died shortly afterwards.
I am proud to bear her name.
Elena O’Halloran
Playlist: When Rod was my only friend, I met my wife
In a Broken Dream by Python Lee Jackson, featuring Rod Stewart
“Every day I spend my time / Drinkin’ wine, feelin’ fine / Waitin’ here to find a sign / That I can understand yes I am”
Great news. I failed my 11-plus, I will go with all my mates to the secondary modern school on the council estate where we all lived. As the son of a bus driver and hospital cleaner, I am comfortable in the company of children of coal miners, ship builders, council workers and shop assistants. However, the enlightened Labour-controlled (then and ever since) council gave its children another chance and I pass the 13-plus. The teachers persuade me to go to the town’s grammar school for boys, a three-mile walk from home. Here we boys wear a uniform and the teachers academic gowns. While we 13-plusers are segregated in our own class, it is noticeable how the other boys are confident and accomplished (academically, musically and in sport), the sons of teachers, lawyers and civil servants. Our affable history teacher tells us we all deserve to be at the school.
Several years later, I sit the scholarship papers and the teachers insist that I go to Oxford. Now 300 miles away from home, in a strange, beautiful and unique city, thrust into a revered institution and an independent life, Rod Stewart becomes my only understanding friend. “I sit here in my lonely room,” he laments. I find most of my fellow students are confident young people, children of top professionals, government ministers, even foreign royalty; there are some from working-class backgrounds, from the new comprehensives, whose parents struggled to allow their children to have a magnificent education. Yet academically, they all deserve to be here.
The course demands that we sit the first public examination at the end of the first term. It’s a daunting prospect, not so much the history paper, but two foreign language books to comprehend and comment on in the exam. Broken Dream is in the charts in late 1972 and it fits my despair. The searing guitar slices painfully through the body, then Rod chips in “Right now is where you are / In a broken dream.” Eight months earlier, the university had abandoned its compulsory O-level Latin entry qualification; so, reliant on a poor O-level in German and the belief that French syntax and words are much like English, I opt for Burckhardt’s 1905 study of history, Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen and De Tocqueville’s classic about the ancien regime and the French revolution. I need to quickly learn French and get my German up to university standard. The Burckhardt professor holds seminars about the book, sets the examination, marks the papers and tells me he is very likely to fail my first attempt. “Ivory towers, bloody flowers / Push their heads into the air / I don’t care if I ever know / There I go’; yeah, you tell ’em, Rod.
I pass all three papers. Three years later, I leave with a degree, three lifelong friends and a lady who is my wife. I can speak French and German. And, inexplicably, you know what, Rod, it’s still my favourite song.
Stewart Hamilton
We love to eat: Auntie Mabel’s teacake buns
Ingredients
450g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
50g lard or butter
10g yeast
25g sugar
250ml warm milk
50-75g currants
Sift warm flour and salt and rub in the fat. Cream the yeast with the sugar, add the warm milk and mix with the flour and fruit to a light elastic dough. Put in a warm place to rise until double in size. Divide the risen dough into pieces and then knead and roll into rolls or chosen shapes. Create teacake men or women with body, head, arms and legs. Use additional currants or sultanas for eyes and buttons.
Place on greased baking sheets, prick the tops and allow to prove for 15 minutes. Bake in a hot oven for 15-20 minutes at 200C/gas mark 6.
Having fun was something I always associate with Auntie Mabel. One of a flotilla of seven great-aunts, she took my grandmother’s place when she died when I was just six months old. Widowed long ago, Auntie Mabel lived with her sister and brother-in-law, her worldly possessions all stored in their granary in preparation for the day she found her new home. She never did.
She would arrive by taxi – a distance of about 80 miles – for one of her frequent visits. I would listen to her wonderful tales , believe the fairies had left dolly mixtures scattered in my bedroom and tiny presents under my pillow, and play hide and seek with her for hours but the highlight of any visit was when she temporarily took charge of the kitchen to make teacake buns. My mother was very orderly and Auntie Mabel was most definitely not .
With apron tied round her ample waist, she would get out all the ingredients and in no time at all the table became a sea of flour and sugar. Of course, she would never weigh anything but above is her recipe for those less confident. I can smell the buns as they rise to double their size, within the comfort of the warm tea towel on the Rayburn. I can picture her face aglow, as she kneads, rolls and shapes. I can see the newly formed buns or teacake men and women, with currants for eyes and mouths.
It is such a wonderful memory of warm kitchens, delicious smells of rising dough and the delight as the teacakes were brought out of the oven and I sank my teeth into the first one with its crispy outside. The butter melted into yellowy rivulets as it ran down each side of my mouth.
Auntie Mabel would then reward herself with a good strong cup of tea while my long-suffering mother attempted to return her kitchen to order. But for a while that kitchen had been the centre of fun, joy and warmth and after all, that is what baking is all about.
Barbie Thomas
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