In 1932 Janes became part of a group of bohemian Swansea friends that included poets Dylan Thomas, Charles Fisher, John Prichard and Vernon Watkins, composer Daniel Jones, artist Mervyn Levy and "Marxist scholar" Bert Trick. Collectively, they became known as The Kardomah Gang or The Kardomah Boys, named after the Kardomah Café, in Castle Street, Swansea, where they would meet. The Café stood opposite the offices of the "South Wales Daily Post", to which Fisher and Thomas were apprenticed in 1930, after they had left school.