As a girl in South Wales, Mavis Nicholson dreaded her friends finding out how closely she rubbed shoulders with Martha Jane, the grandmother whose large feather bed she had to share until she left home. Mavis's childhood memoir conjures up her vanished world at briton Ferry, the small house crammed with grandparents, parents, brother and sister. She describes the street games with her friends, outings with the flamboyant Matha Jane, visits from the vegtable cart and the cockle lady, her grandfather's drunken exploits, as well as the weekly highlights of the Kinema and Jerusalem Chapel. dates with the boys, and the gradual awakening of the world beyond the Ferry. . . . Above all she recalls the bittersweet memoirs of her possessive, baleful, increasingly jealous grandmother, who fed Pop, her husband, separate meals, surreptitiously sold her daughter's piano and regularly drove her son-in-law to seething exile in his garden shed - Martha Jane, the dominant influence in Mavis's young life. An enchanting account of the joys and agonies of girlhood. . . . . .