The Ice Cream Parlour: Part 1

‘Naples drawn in charcoal. And bloody cold,’ was how Tony Cichella remembered his first impression of the Colliery when he arrived in 1953. Like Naples, the streets were narrow and winding; the houses overcrowded and cramped. The sea, its colours, moods and rhythms, prevailed over both places. Outsiders would describe both communities as impoverished, but Tony was immediately struck by how dignified and hard-working the people of the colliery were. Neighbours helped each other. Family was sacred. Doors were left unlocked. No, people from the Colliery would never have described themselves as impoverished. They had their pit, proudly fuelling the Nation’s homes and industries, they had their modest, tidy houses, they had their families and friends. They knew what was important. They had everything they needed. There were great riches in the Colliery, Tony recognised immediately and that reminded him of home. It was the flatness, the lack of colour that unsettled him. The North Sea was perpetually storm-cloud grey, opaque and utterly lacking in luminosity. The beaches were blackened with coal dust and even the washing that billowed in back yards every Monday morning seemed ashen. When Tony remembered Naples, he would see the fluttering of jewel coloured dresses strung high on lines against a sumptuous blue sky. He would remember the sun, a daily visitor, perfect and round like an orange, incandescent above terracotta houses. He remembered the street markets of Naples, shimmering with the riches of the harvest: piles of vermillion red tomatoes, gleaming purple aubergines and glistening silver fish. If Naples was sensual, vivid, voluptuous even, then the Colliery, at first, seemed drab and austere. To Tony, Naples was a work of art painted large: riotous with colour and light and sharp lines. The Colliery was a quiet charcoal sketch in blurry shades of black and grey. 

Tony moved to the Colliery with his wife Lucia and nine-year-old daughter, Stella, to open an ice cream parlour. In the 1950s, the Colliery was thriving. The post-war rebuilding of Britain was powered by coal. Coal was king. Work at the pit was plentiful and secure. Colliery boys never questioned that they would follow their fathers and grandfathers down the pit. It was a hard job, dangerous too. Just two years before Tony arrived with his family, almost 80 men had been killed in an explosion down the mine. The whole country had mourned. But despite the dangers and the hardships of the life, the community was shaped by mining. It was a symbiotic relationship: pit and community. When the pit prospered, the whole community bloomed like a well-tended garden.

Cichella’s opened at the bottom of Sea View Lane, the Colliery’s busy main street. There was a vast assortment of tiny shops: greengrocers, butchers, bakers, haberdashers, hardware shops, chemists. It was an entirely self-sufficient community. It was not uncommon for residents of the Colliery simply never to leave, to have never even visited the nearby towns of Durham or Sunderland. There were allotments, a cinema, three churches and a park with bowling greens, football fields and benches overlooking orderly flower beds. Dances and concerts were regular attractions at the Welfare Hall, where weary pitmen could also enjoy a pint or a game of darts. It was a close community, knitted together as neatly and cosily as the creations in the window of Miss Parker’s Wool Shop.

The ice cream parlour was an immediate success. Outside, an elegant candy-striped awning welcomed patrons to ‘Cichella’s Delicious Ices’. Inside were intimate little booths with ice-blue Formica tables that were always cool to the touch. Tony, loquacious and gracious, dressed in a white coat, dispensed milk shakes, ice cream floats and cornets from behind a gleaming glass counter. He was a short, dapper man, famous for his silk bow ties. His warmth towards his customers was genuine and infectious. He knew everyone’s name. He remembered the tiniest details about his customers and their families: from how they liked their coffee to whose father suffered with gout. Children adored him. He was loud and he was colourful and he would often treat them to an extra scoop of ice cream or a chocolate flake free of charge. His tutti frutti ice cream, billowingly soft and bejewelled with glace fruits, was do delicious it routinely sold out by lunchtime. 

For children, stepping into Cichella’s was like entering a magical world. A world of richness, sweetness and abundance: it represented everything good. It wasn’t just the creamy ices that drew them in with goggle-eyed giddiness. Behind the counter were rows of heavy glass jars crammed with sweets. The colours were kaleidoscopic. Pocket money was always blown at Cichella’s. The temptations were just too great. Children would rush out of the shop clasping white paper bags as if they were filled with found treasure, their faces shining with delight. Birthdays were celebrated with extravagant knickerbocker glories that were so huge they had to be eaten with spoons 10 inches long. 

But Cichella’s wasn’t just cherished by children and families. It was the customary location for teenage first dates. ‘Fancy coming to Cichella’s with us, pet?’ a lad would mumble. The cosy, duck egg blue booths were perfectly appointed for clumsy, tender romances. Young couples would share a sundae there, touching fingers across the cool Formica, shyly exchanging tentative vanilla scented kisses.

During the day, Colliery women would meet for a chat. They would sip coffee or Horlicks made with frothy milk dispensed from a towering silver machine that was always polished to a lustrous shine. For the women, the little booths were sanctums of friendship and gossip and problems shared. The place resonated with chatter, laughter and the gurgle and hiss of the coffee machine. Cichella’s was special. It was as welcoming as a warm hug at the end of a terrible day at work. 

Lucia Cichella was as reserved as Tony was ebullient. She was as shy as a kitten and somewhat overwhelmed by her new life in the Colliery. Her English was not as good as her husband’s, so she spoke rarely and when she did her voice was barely audible and usually directed to the floor. She was a beautiful woman, delicate and birdlike, with raven hair and dark eyes. Her dresses were more vivid and vibrantly patterned than Colliery ladies were used to. Her gem coloured cardigans were neatly fitted. Her lipstick was a touch too red; a bit too ‘Jane Russell’. Her emerald green suede shoes were the subject of impassioned debate. All of these singularities were noted and remarked upon by the women of the Colliery. They weren’t being unkind, Lucia was so gentle, everyone was charmed by her, but it was as if a rare and exotic bird had landed amidst the coal dust. It was simply impossible not to notice and to comment.