Italian connection

It's exciting when something new appears in our Farmers' Market. Yesterday this stall holder was selling fresh 'artisan' pasta in a variety of flavours: lemon, chilli, spinach, squid ink, beetroot'n'garlic - the latter we have sampled and found delicious.

This is a new venture by a young family living in a Cardiganshire village not far away: they will be selling their pasta in markets across South Wales. We already have a Dutch cheese maker and a Spanish shop keeper to enrich the local palate so I was thrilled to learn that the stall holder's wife has Italian connections. Her grandfather arrived in Wales as a prisoner of war, one of the many who were held in isolated rural camps across the British Isles after being captured in WW2. Like a number of others he settled here with his family when the war was over. His wife continued to make pasta for the family and the habit never died. Now they are hoping to turn it into a business.

At the moment we are being bombarded with the nationalistic rhetoric of the United Kingdom Independence Party whose main election platform is curbing immigration. (One candidate actually suggested that a respected black British comedian should emigrate to a 'black country': the laughable aspect is that Lenny Henry does come from the Black Country, as the English industrial midlands are known.)

To me, ethnic diversity is a source of enrichment, a channel for novelty and a stimulus for creativity. To me, it seems a triumph when foreign influences and traditions add spice and flavour to our own genetic broth. Elsewhere in this small town we have the granddaughter of a German POW running a successful restaurant while the grandson of another Italian captive who settled here was the perpetrator of this amazing mural.
Should we all 'go home'?