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Next to Stack Square was Shepards Square where my mother lived during the war years. She was seven years old. My grandfather kept rabbits under the arches of the iron works, and in one of the houses lived a man with a peg leg who sold sweets to the children.

My grandfather was a miner during the war years, but doubled up as a fireman when not down the mine. When I was a teenager my grandmothers sister lived in the half door coal house at Garn-y-Rhiw.

In the seventies they still had the toilet outside, a waterbute outside the back door and my uncle still bathed in front of the fire in a tin bath after a shift at the mine. My auntie had a range and baked all sorts of things. They still lived as if it was still in the fourties.

My mum went to St Peters School in Blaenavon, and she can remeber in fine detail the school during the war years.