Born in 1917, Glad tells of the sights and sounds of the Cross and the city, and of the characters who lived at the Cross when she was young. Glad lived in a terrace house in Victoria Street, and later she lived in one of the first high-rise blocks of flats at the Cross, ‘Corinthia’. Glad’s father deserted the family, but her mother was a ‘very good manager’. Glad’s older sisters, who worked, ‘had to put their money down on the table, and get pocket money’. Her mother and sister owned a cake shop and café at the Cross for a few years from the late 1920s till about 1932, when the Depression caused them to sell the business.