When I came back to Cardiff in the 60's it had started to change, the demolition people had moved in. They had this great plan to redevelop the city, There was the Buchanan report, which was this huge report saying that they were going to knock down communities and redevelop the centre of town. To some extent they did it but they did it bits and bobs, the Cardiff peoples Paper Ran a campaign against it.
I remember in the 60's and through to the 70' s there was these huge great patches at the centre of Cardiff just left empty and they were used as Car parks where the fruit stalls were on Custom Street, that was left empty for years. They also cleared the back of Queen Street where the St David's centre is now. In a way in the 60's the centre of Cardiff was very, very bleak especially at night, there were none of the clubs and pubs in the centre of town. We just used to be beatniks then wearing black polonecks and duffel coats. Cardiff Stagnated then whilst all these decisions were being made. Of course at that time I was young and liked going out so I would hang out in various pubs. I even tried mixing with the artists. We used to hang in the Kardomer Café on Queen Street, known as the KD. The Art College then was in the Friary and the artists used to come over to the KD for coffee and I used to sit with them, I would sit with them learning to think and write poetry and pretending to like Jazz. Looking back I remember Cardiff still being a dark place. After the war when austerity was biting I remember Cardiff being very dark, shops didn't light up their windows at night. There was still gas lighting down the centre of St Mary's Street.