I'm not too sure just how idyllic my childhood was, but I remember it fondly.

Back then, in the early 1960s, Llanishen was still thought of as a village. The two vast new council estates to north and south somehow seemed miles away from the old village centre, largely unchanged for decades. Apart from the church and the pub, there was an old smithy called Miss Cosslett's.

Our family had owned the Falconer and Watts filling station in Station Road opposite the smithy since 1919 - the photo above is from the 1920s.

But what I remember most fondly is that we also garaged a number of coaches and hire cars in the garages on the open land to the rear (now occupied by Llanishen Court). And there were also lots of apple trees.

So I spent most of my free time climbing trees, falling into clumps of stinging nettles, playing hide-and-seek amongst the coaches, and clambering over the ex-Army lorry we used for delivering paraffin.

And there were walks into the wilds of Lisvane, with its mysterious old mill, or up Heol Hir to the whistling stile (where you heard an echo if you yelled "oo-who") ... and where there was a bottomless pool where a cow was supposed to have drowned and vanished.

Well, we believed everything we were told in those days.

Rob Falconer - October 2007