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I was about a year old when war started, living in North Ely, Cardiff - near the top, which is where they put out the air raid warnings. So we heard a lot of that over the next few years.

In our house we had a Morrison air raid shelter - a big steel thing like a table, inside the house. But we never put the side up.. .and I understand that it's completely useless unless you put the side up!

Some of my earliest memories are of the air raids. I think they must have happened quite suddenly, because they were in full swing by the time we got ourselves into the shelter. I remember seeing through the window. It was really quite spectacular because we were up high and looking over Grangetown.It made an indelible impression on me.

(I once went to see a performance of Prokofiev ballet Cinderella, in London. It was done in a modern style and included and very life-like air raid. Several people in the audience, including myself, were very distressed by it.)

The noise is something unbelievable and the whole sky after a while was aflame - you'd think the whole city was on fire, which it wasn't; it was only certain areas; and there were searchlights going.

I remember my grandmother who lived with us and who looked after us as much as my mam. My father was a Baptist minister in Archer Rd, Ely, He was a Warden and had one of those Warden's helmets. He was out helping people who were bombed out, (the church was used as a centre for those who'd been bombed, so he wasn't with us in the air raid shelter, but my grandmother was, and I can see her now, very stately and with white hair. That's one of my earliest memories.

What I don't remember is what my cousin Gwyneth has since told me, that after a while the air raids seemed to be affecting me deeply as a child. So much so that my grandmother took me away, evacuated me, to stay with her sister in the Forest of Dean. Apparently she had me with her for about six months before we returned back to my parents, when things had eased off a bit.

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