MARIA & CARMELO GRACEFFA - From Italy. Maria and Carmelo were born in Sicily, in villages 20 miles apart - Maria in 1939, Carmelo in 1933.

Maria grew up among vineyards while Carmelo's family farmed fruit and corn.

Carmelo remembers the end of the war. He was 11 then.

"I remember Amnesty Day - September, 1945. I was always asking soldiers for cigarettes. At first, I could only say in English, hello - cigarette?' That was it. At school, I got caned for smoking. I smoked when I was six - but not in front of my parents!

"Everyday I'd go to the American camp - a nylon tent in a trench - and they'd give you cigarettes, money, ration-packs with chocolate, meat, toothpaste. I got on with the Americans. I helped British troops, too, laying telephone wires."

In 1950, Carmelo thought about emigrating in search of other work.

"I had an uncle who'd been a PoW, St Helens way. He told me England had treated him very well. But, he said, The weather is nothing like ours'."

In 1951, Carmelo sailed to England, travelling with 500 other Italians. They came north to a hostel in Maltby, near Doncaster, and were recruited to work in the coalmines.

"My first impression of England? It was very depressing in those days. Lots of fog and smoke. But you couldn't go back with an empty pocket.

"Then we were sent to a colliery between Walkden and Swinton, for more training to become a proper collier.

"I worked in coal from November, 1951, until June, 1959. Then 34 years for British Rail."

Carmelo met Maria through her sister, who had married his friend. She had a photograph of Maria sitting on a Vespa scooter. It caught Carmelo's eye.

Carmelo asked his mother to visit Maria's family and for the next 12 months the young couple wrote letters to each other.

Maria remembers: "When I saw him in the photograph he sent, I started to love him. Ten months later, he came to my house. We got married within a month in 1956, when I was just 17. My mum let me come to England because she was feeling sorry for Carmelo, on his own here."

There were only a few Italian families in Bolton then - chiefly the ice-cream families of Sabini, Tognarelli, Manfredi, who had put down roots here in earlier years.

"When I first came, I cried a lot for the first months. It was very lonely.

"If all my daughters had married in Sicily, I'd be living there.

"But I like England and I can visit Sicily on holiday. We still go back every year - we have a house there.

"My sister's daughter has a farm and we sit out under the vines."