I've lived here for thirty two years. As a child my mother had wanderlust so we would move around quite a bit. I'vw lived here longer than I've lived anywhere in the whole of my life.

The people here are very genuine. If they can help you they will. They'd rather help you, than hinder or hurt you. I grew up in Penarth, and I'd much rather live in Ely than Penarth.

Ely has got a very bad reputation, but it's simply a matter of a dozen or so families, one rotten apple in the barrel sort of thing - and we all get tarred with the same brush. It isn't representative of Ely as a whole.

We get saddened when we read Ely, Ely, Ely. Sometimes things happen in Caerau, and people still say it's Ely. Caerau and Ely are two different areas. They're both very large estates, but they are separate.

Sometimes something will happen in Caerau and the press record it as Ely. My mother will ring me up and say "why don't you get out of that place", and I think no, because there's more murders and more goings on in Penarth and Dinas Powys than there is here. It's just that the press seem to like slagging off Ely.

Most of Ely was made up of people from the Docks area and Grangetown and all over the city. It was a purpose built estate. They were very grateful, as was I, to be housed in a two bedroomed house.

The streets are not so terraced, and we have front gardens. There's 100ft at the back of the house instead of the small backyard that you're more likely to get in places like Grangetown and Penarth. We have space.

Quite a few of us have extended our right to buy, so that's how happy people are. I come round the corner and I'm home. I'm still a hundred and so yards to go, but I'm home - I'm in my street.