To Hear the Skylark's Song by Huw Lewis

Author:Huw Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 111-1-11-111111-1
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2017-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

The Sound of Thunder

By the time I reached the age of seven or eight my horizons grew a little wider still; pretty much the whole of the village was mine to explore and I grew to know the streets and shops and gwlis intimately. I had moved a little further into the wider world. Often now, after school and on Saturdays, I would be sent on errands to the shops on Aberfan Road. Almost everything that a household needed could be bought in the village in those days.

The first ‘self-service’ shop had opened up in Merthyr and the adults talked about it, though I had yet to see it. Many voiced their suspicion of this new way of shopping and stressed to each other the importance of checking the numbers on the long till rolls handed to them at the checkout to search for mechanised swindles. ‘It’ll never catch on,’ they said. So for my family, as yet, there was no ‘weekly shop’, and purchases were made day to day as the need arose.

My most common errand was to run to ‘The Berni’s’ to buy twenty Player’s Navy Cut for Dad. The Berni’s was one of the legendary, now almost extinct, Italian cafés of the South Wales Valleys, which had been opened by Italian immigrants to the once booming coalfield. They had quickly grown to be beloved of Valleys people as they added a dash of continental style and sophistication to our high streets. Almost every Valleys town and village could boast of at least one Italian café. Merthyr had its Viazzani’s, the Rhondda had its Bracchi’s and Aberfan had the Berni’s. Despite the name above the door it was run, confusingly, with cheerful efficiency and pride by a Mr and Mrs Emmanuelli. They spoke English perfectly, but with a heavy Italian accent. She would frequently switch to speaking Italian in order, so it seemed to me, to chide her husband for his constant over enthusiasm and off-colour jokes. This happened a lot.

The Berni’s sold sweets and chocolates of course, but centre stage was given over to the enormous chrome and steel edifice of their coffee machine. It was polished to a mirror shine and towered over their high counter emitting gentle hissing sounds until called upon to make frothy coffee by whooshing a jet of pressurised steam, loud enough to drown out all conversation, into a jug of milk. A marvellous contraption, it could double up by means of a special attachment, as a cooker of ‘steamed pies’ – a distinctly Valleys delicacy – which would be flopped, soggy, hot and delicious, on to your plate; steaming away like a freshly wet nappy. The café also boasted a chest freezer with a sliding top that dispensed orange Jubblies in their odd triangular packs, as well as choc ices and lollies: Mivvies, Orange Maids, Funny Feet, Fabs and Funny Faces and, my favourite, Zoom Rocket lollies. Mr Emmanuelli also dispensed, from a fridge behind the counter, bricks of Sidoli ice cream, wedged between two wafers, with or without a chocolate flake.

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