DOUBLE NOUGAT DAYS

these Glasgow Fair days, but the Clyde coast's cafe society is still

flourishing.

IAN SUTHERLAND and RUDOLPH KENNA offer an affectionate tribute to the

ice-cream families from Italy.

GLASGOW Fair's golden age -- forever identified by a thousand

music-hall comedians as the folk ritual of going ''doon the watter'' --

never was, in truth, some remnant of medieval times, but a product of

industrialisation.

Clyde towns like Rothesay, Saltcoats, Largs, Millport, West Kilbride,

Ardrossan, Ayr, Troon, and Fairlie, flourished between 1900 and 1950.

Since the 1960s, maw, paw, and the weans -- joined by parties of working

teenagers and single people who also once holidayed on the Clyde coast

-- have fled to foreign parts. Holiday patterns have changed anyway. One

observer of the coast, noting that holidays happen all year in the late

twentieth-century, commented of Saltcoats in mid-July: ''You wouldn't

know Glasgow Fair was on.''

It wasn't hard to notice Glasgow Fair 80 years ago. In 1905, every

train leaving Glasgow Central on Fair Saturday had to be duplicated and

even triplicated. On the last peace-time Fair before the armies rolled

in August 1914, 30 ''specials'' conveyed industrial Glasgow's families

from St Enoch station to Largs, Ayr, and Girvan. On Fair Monday, 13,000

people left the Broomielaw on 11 steamers.

By July 1916, with the Battle of the Somme raging, Glasgow Fair was

postponed indefinitely. The restriction really only applied to essential

war workers -- thousands of others still made the pilgrimage to the

coast, though cheap excursion fares vanished for the Great War's

duration.

The rise of Glasgow Fair -- temporary (and, until the late 1930s,

unpaid) release for industrial wage slaves -- more or less coincided

with the culmination of Italian immigration into Scotland. By 1901,

there were an estimated 4000 Italians north of the border -- 1500 of

them in Glasgow. Like not a few working-class families celebrating

Glasgow Fair, they came from desperately poor rural areas. As with most

immigrants before or since, they started at the bottom of the heap --

and entered the catering trade.

By the early 1900s, Glasgow had more than 300 Italian ice-cream and

confectionery shops. Some Italians owned as many as 10 shops -- and

several boys were employed in each establishment. Brought from Italy at

their employer's expense, they were often relations of the padroni. When

contracts expired, the lucky ones could open shops of their own.

Some of the ''apprentices'' had a hard time -- 15 or 17-hour days in

cafes and fish restaurants were common. Wages were as low as a shilling

a day. Youngsters faced regular abuse from drunken locals who descended

on ''the Tally's'' when the pubs shut. One Glasgow Italian, writing for

La Biscossa Latina (one of two short-lived Glasgow-based Italian

newspapers), recalled his own ill-use by a padroni and pledged: ''Today

I am nobody's 'boy' and I treat my own 'boys' well.''

Once free of the padroni -- benign sponsor or hard-nosed exploiter --

young men had to seek opportunity fast. The Clyde coast -- patently

booming in summer -- beckoned.

The first cafes seem to have emerged on the coast around the 1880s.

Holiday crowds flocked in from the start. This was the age of the

seaside landlady -- exemplar of an ambiguous tradition. They wanted the

trade, but weren't enamoured of the customers. Families were turfed out

at breakfast -- and roamed the proms till tea-time. Young Italian men

who'd gone west filled a gap in the market.

Cafes were warm, welcoming, cheerful -- and attractive. From the

outset, decor mattered. Few Victorian and Edwardian gems survive. But

ideals of service and welcome visibly flourish into the 1980s.

Between the 1880s and the outbreak of the First World War, Italian

cafes spread along the Clyde coast like wildfire. Threatened local

interests inevitably lashed out. Newspapers took a perverse delight in

headlining cases of cafe proprietors hauled up for selling ice-cream on

the Sabbath. It never seems to have dawned on these Mrs Grundys that

customers demanded Sunday ice-cream.

Enterprising cafe people simply worked on through the barrage. There

were compensations. Cafe back-rooms retained the flavour of village life

in far-off Lucca or Frosinone. The immigrants sang folk songs to guitar

or mandolin accompaniment. Men played scopa.

And they've clung to an inheritance that's only now attracting

attention from design students, artists, photographers, and social

historians. Next year, Glasgow's Collins Gallery hopes to mount a major

exhibition devoted to cafes. In truth, cafe society has a real

double-nougat of a story to tell.

Tony Coia was born in Glasgow in 1904. His father Luigi (who,

according to family lore, walked from Monte Cassino to Glasgow), opened

Millport's Ritz Cafe in 1910.

Says Tony Coia, who started work in the Ritz while still a schoolboy:

''Come summertime, and the living wasn't easy.'' Cafe people went where

the customers were. ''I had to wheel an ice-cream barrow up to Fintry

Bay.'' The three-mile shove was the least of it. Coias were up with the

lark -- first down lit the kitchen fires. Ice-cream was boiled on a

primitive gas ring. Tony recalls: ''I stood over it with a paddle. It

was like making custard.''

After the First World War, trade rocketed. In July 1920, Clyde resorts

reported ''abnormal'' bookings. On Fair Saturday 1924, St Enoch Station

''resembled Hampden Park on a Cup Final day.'' Broomielaw steamers

presented ''an Armada-like appearance.'' Coast-bound charabancs lined

Carlton Place for nearly half a mile. Even in the wake of the 1926

General Strike, 10 ''specials'' headed for Largs.

Real poverty endured, but in 1929, when 500,000 people left Glasgow

for the Fair, more than #1m. was drawn from Glasgow Savings Bank -- and

that year, the cine-camera was ''growing in popularity.''

And while the Clyde coast basked in a postwar boom, the first faint

writing appeared on the wall.

For the moment, the Clyde held its own. But market-conscious railway

companies offered cheap rates to resorts in England, Wales, Ireland, and

the Channel Islands. Maw, paw and the weans were already getting itchy

feet.

Clyde coast landladies still turned their lodgers out in the rain. The

breed's hauteur even sparked off Scotland's first entry into the holiday

camp world. In 1911, cheesed-off supporters of the burgeoning

co-operative movement -- denouncing flea-ridden tenement flats and

endless meals of cheap fish -- founded Rothesay's famous Roseland

holiday camp and showed working-class people self-help in leisure.

Sensing new needs and aspirations, enterprising Italians revamped

cafes. They didn't know it then, but they were creating classic 1930s

environments. The Ritz sprouted a superb green Vitrolite frontage. Tony

Coia's grandson, Luigi Giorgetti, knows that you never miss what you've

got till it's gone. He's searching Britain for green Vitrolite to

restore the Ritz frontage to Art Deco glory. ''I was almost there a few

weeks ago. An old Edinburgh lady offered me Vitrolite from her bathroom

-- but it was black.''

Luigi won't give up easily. There's talk of a marina in Millport --

and southern yuppies could savour original Deco, along with the same

home-made ice-cream that had Tony Coia mobbed by more down-market crowds

in prewar Fintry Bay.

The Ritz's family team went organic generations ago. The coffee has

always been real (though visitors stuck grimly to familiar tea until the

1960s), the ice-cream recipe is literally Victorian, the milk comes from

Cumbrae herds (and occasionally tastes lightly of turnip to prove it).

And like most of the remaining cafe owners, Luigi has his secret

weapons. His marshmallow is brewed up in the back shop -- rivalled only

by the inventive young Giorgetti's own brand of confidential recipe

milk-shake syrups. The Ritz -- all it needs is a decent length of green

Vitrolite -- is gearing up for the 90s.

By the late 30s, Deco was everywhere in Scotland. The picture palaces

have tumbled, the city tea-rooms have vanished. On the coast, the cafes

still fly the 30s flag. The Moorings, Largs's moderne masterpiece, will

soon have gone to infill a car-park. Elsewhere, in more sensitive hands,

the holiday experiences of the 30s soldier on -- officered by some of

the most creative people ever to set up shop in Scotland.

Just a few of those environments survive virtually intact.

Conservationists fought hard to save James Houston's Moorings (as they

tried to salvage his unique Viking cinema, and mourned the demise of his

Art Deco Suez Canal Bar). Perversity ruled. While the east of Scotland

rallied to renew -- with spectacular success -- Edinburgh's Maybury

Hotel, Clyde coast newspapers demanded the sinking of The Moorings. ''A

rotting old hulk,'' asserted one editorial -- inter alia denouncing

''rambling articles in the Glasgow Herald.''

The working class may have been increasingly lured away from the coast

for their ''fresh air fortnights.'' A new middle class ventured out of a

summer evening behind the wheel. The enterprising Nardini family of

Largs rose to the opportunity. With the retail price of cars dropping by

50% between the mid-20s and the mid-30s (and petrol, by 1938, tuppence a

gallon cheaper than in 1914), an ''ice-cream roadhouse'' on the coast

might attract this new carriage trade very well.

Nardini's of Largs still retains its authentic palm court atmosphere

-- in pristine condition. Designed in 1935 by architects C. Davidson and

Sons, Nardini's is still under daily supervision by family members.

In the rear restaurant, silver service, snow-white linen, and state of

the art Italian cuisine still packs in the diners. In the ornate foyer,

real Italian rolls and bread (gone in the twinkling of an eye when

denizens of Largs churches emerge from Sunday morning worship) vie with

the mouth-watering sweet counters.

Nardini's are a growing force in the super-market ice-cream trade.

Somehow, the family's renowned product tastes best from a fluted glass,

elegantly scooped with a long spoon as the sun sets over Bute and

Cumbrae. And joy of joys, a small orchestra is back on selected summer

evenings. Welcome back to the 30s.

Clyde coast cafes aren't just traditional decor and real coffee. They

are living history lessons. Settimo Cavani, born 69 years ago above the

West End cafe in Saltcoats, recalls making ice-cream in a tub in the

back-court in the years after the First World War. Ice-cream alchemy

endures in the West End's back shop -- a mini industrial museum complete

with wooden refrigerator c. 1948.

Setti's father Giovanni, brought to Scotland by a Rothesay padroni,

took to Saltcoats life like a toddler to a Cavani cone. The newcomers

put more than their money into Saltcoats. There are three Italian names

on the town's First World War memorial.

Everybody and his dog met in the West End -- from the Labour League of

Youth to the local rugby club. Giovanni himself hosted pigeon fanciers'

gatherings. He kept his loft where the West End's ice-cream (you may ask

for the recipe, but you'll get the rubber ear) now churns. ''East is

East and West is West/Cavana's Ice-Cream is the Best,'' ran the ads --

mostly, and rather oddly, in church magazines.

Says Setti, of prewar Glasgow Fairs: ''They spent everything they

had.'' Flats were downright overcrowded. Fathers spent all night walking

the town to let their families have the beds. During the day,

Glaswegians queued for a ''black man'' (single nougat) or consumed

''McCallums'' (vanilla ice-cream and raspberry syrup).

The West End doesn't open till 11pm anymore. But they still come in

looking for the occasional McCallum. Old-fashioned sweeties still sell.

One seasoned drinker buys liquorice by the pound weight -- swearing

blind it adds an indefinable something to a pint of real ale. Try that

in a supermarket. And a surprising number of adults call in for

liquorice by the yard. Discreet inquiries by the management have

revealed that, in various parts of western Scotland, there are a

surprising number of ''sugarolly water'' addicts well over the age of

21.

Like the vanished Moorings a nautical pastiche, the Cafe Melbourne,

next door to the West End, was created by shop-fitters Dollar-Rae.

This mini-Moorings, built in 1953, combines nautical moderne, belated

Deco -- and distinctive 50s rhomboid shapes.

The Cafe Melbourne -- celebrated for its cheeseburgers (unlike most

cafe owners, the urbane Mr Roberts will tell you who the legendary

butcher is) -- weighed anchor just as Glasgow Fair entered its Indian

summer in the 50s.

Then, a dozen hands were needed for Sunday nights -- customers queued

for seats. Now, it's Chalmers and a part-time girl, and he hauls up the

gang-plank at 6pm.

The Cafe Melbourne's stylish neon sign no longer beckons. But Chalmers

Roberts won't forget the night a helpful local youth rushed in to tell

him: ''The F in cafe's gone oot.'' Yes, it took Chalmers a couple of

seconds to catch on too.

Upstairs, 50s lights are still in place -- and this friendly old girl

of the sea is a long way from her last voyage.

Admiring architectural and design students descend on Tog's Cafe in

Troon. Locals are blase about Tog's splendours -- they come for the

coffee and the specialities de la maison. The list includes something

called ''Kaleidoscope'' -- which defies description.

At 85, John Togleri -- ''Mr Tog'' -- drives a 1966 Jaguar E-Type (TOG

191) and dresses completely in pastel colours. ''I get the exact shades

out of Smartie packets.'' This cafe proprietor extraordinaire still

lives above the shop. Mr Tog's emporium proudly retains its original

1930s Vitrolite frontage and neon sign -- designed by its owner 60 years

ago. This was the first Ayrshire cafe incorporating curved glass bricks

-- reminiscent of prewar Glasgow cocktail bars.

Mr Tog's ranks of massed confectionery cartons are a minor art form.

Last year a chocolate firm ran a window display contest. Mr Tog

inevitably carried off the colour TV. He says modestly: ''We Italians

are artists -- we've all got a bit of Michelangelo.''

When Tog's opened, the story goes that the manager of Kilmarnock

Co-operative Society called in for a coffee, took one look -- and

replicated the frontage in his stores.

Mr Tog confesses one regret. His Art Deco murals in coloured

plasterwork vanished in a misconceived gesture to the 60s. If the

original designs ever surface, expect a very spectacular restoration.

This summer, Clyde coast cafe people are feeling a little miffed. A

glossy free pub magazine has suggested that Clyde cafes are passe. While

trendies concoct obituaries, Mr Tog dreams of renewing his Deco panels,

Luigi Giorgetti combs old ladies' bathrooms hunting for elusive green

Vitrolite, and Setti Cavani serves a mean lentil soup at half the price

in a flash new city veggy joint.

The Clyde coast's holiday trade may have vanished. But the cafes live

on -- and life is the word. This is where granny takes wee Sharon for a

Hot Tangerine. Cafes aren't in the tourist brochures -- not rated as

highly, it seems, as the McKitsch Pipe Band, dubious Burns relics, and

the Ardrossan Highland Games. Mr Tog in pastel glory -- the original

Smartie-pants -- would surely draw the pendolari better than shots of

putting greens and images of SPTE trains.

Just as they moved from Victoriana via Art Deco to the styles of the

50s and 60s, the cafes may be evolving again. Continental-style cafe

bars are in vogue. Traditional cafes may yet rival imitation fin de

siecle cafe bars where lukewarm coffee rules OK.

First-generation Italian immigrants faced notoriously narrow-minded

local authorities and a population unenlightened by travel. Did they

really want to serve tea instead of Chianti?

The Clyde coast cafe may re-assert itself in a form that would

probably have delighted those musical sons and daughters of Barga who

voted with their feet and came to Scozia all those years ago.