At the top of the hill from Gabalfa, at the junction of Whitchurch and North Roads, adjacent to the trolley bus terminal was a pool hall club and an Andrew Carnegie Library. I can't recall how it was I joined the library, or graduated, at the age of eleven or thereabouts, from reading Richmal Crompton's "William" books to Richmal Crompton's adult novels, Hugh Ross Williamson, Jane Lane, George Eliot, The Uncle Silas novels, and many, many more. I think that somewhere along the line I encountered sadness and tragedy as counterbalance to William's hilarious antics, and manufactured an explanation that I was taking out 2 books a week for my father, and 2 books a week for me. The next thing you know, I was reading Henrik Ibsen and Yates.
The library isn't there any more. I corresponded by email to a librarian in Cardiff and asked where Gabalfa and Mynachdy children would go nowadays for a library. The librarian was at a loss for words. Maybe no-one expects council house kids to want to read about people in the outside world. Maybe I-pods and Blackberries and mobile phones and on-line messaging are too all important and there's no time to develop a joy of reading.
It was my reading which enabled me to overcome inarticulate shyness and step gently from one job to another, enjoying career progression and opportunities which would otherwise have been denied to someone of my social background. It took me years to overcome my sense of inadequacy in the company of middle-class people. To me they seemed as privileged aristocracy.
In my last years at Cathays High School for Boys I enjoyed a group of friends who were exploring music and thought for the first time, and although they subsequently went on to university and I went to work in a shop, we all got together over holidays, and the mother of one of the friends provided her house and cocoa and chocolate biscuits for us all to sit and talk and listen to music and to keep his parents awake. They had a corner grocery store in a street near Malefant Street. I was like an egg hatching in that dynamic, discoursive, voluably competitive clique ! One turned up years later, having departed Canada leaving professional fees taxes unpaid, and four daughters and a wife to support. One became a rabidly conservative Anglo-Catholic Clergyman Seminary Provost. I haven't a clue about the others.