Going to school you were either a prody or a rock cake- Roman Catholic; so coming from our house, because everyone was mixed, my father was from Gloucester and apparently we are Norwegian, but I don't know and my mother was Jewish and pretend she wasn't! So we were Protestant Jews in the middle of a big Catholic area. All my cousins were Catholic, so when we walk under the bridge you have St David's on your right and my cousins used to say, 'if you don't make the sign of the cross you'll go to hell'. So we used to cross over the road to go to our school, because we went to the protestant school at the junction next to the central Boys club where Jim Driscoll's statue is now. Then you had the gas works where the Big Sleep Hotel is now, and then you had the Gas works offices all along by there. Our school was next door, so when the gas mantels go we would take it in turns to go and get the gas.
That school was of every race because they came from down Bute Town so all your friends were Egyptian, Jamaican, Maltese- my husband is Maltese extraction, and nobody took any notice at all. The Church, St: Mary's which was attached to our school the Arab boys would come and hide there at the back so their fathers wouldn't know they had been to church, just to get the holy picture so they could go to the 6penny Sunday night hop. You had to have a holy picture to get in on Sunday nights. There was two nights, Saturday night you didn't need a picture. It was only a little vestry I can't believe how many people it held.
It is so strange to think of how it used to be, my mothers mother had 7 children and her sister had 10 my mother had 12, so all our area was my cousins. All those little streets, Garth Street, Dyfryn Street, Morgan Street, that is where we lived. My Auntie Sissi only had one leg, she tripped when she was 12 and she had to have her leg off because of gangrene. But it didn't do her no harm because she had 3 husbands! My brother used to call her half a knicker!