The day I got so unceremoniously asked to leave by my Bayswater landlady was the Sunday evening, on my return from walking all the kids home and returning to the flat. The next day, Monday, I called round to the Centre after college and told Megan about my disgrace, which amused her very much. “You’d better move in here,” she said. “There’s a room on the first floor you can turn into a bedsit. Rent-free if you do another evening group.” Done! We cleared and painted up the room and moved me in the next weekend. I bought exactly the colours I wanted: black, dark green, white and a silver ceiling. Very student.

By living in the Centre, I got drawn into all sorts of things, somewhat to the detriment of evenings of study. It was more fun to help Megan in a hundred and one little jobs, chat with the elderly or the young mums, and keep an ever-changing group of children amused and off the streets. My own little group, including the twins, Billy and John, plus Barry, were always around.  I shouted at the older teenage louts when they rocked cars or graffitied walls in a way that would be unthinkable today. Now I would probably be knifed—then they looked shocked and moved off muttering apologies.

I took the children on occasional outings in London. Few of them had been for so much as a bus ride away, so Megan provided petty cash for the bus or tube and refreshments. I think they found the transport the most enjoyable thing each time. They were probably intimidated by the British Museum and Nelson’s column and the things I felt we should visit. A trip to Richmond Park for a picnic started out wonderfully, but they took one look at the Round Pond, took off their shoes and socks and jumped straight in. It didn’t occur to me we shouldn’t do it, so it was probably lucky that the only person to step on a broken bottle was me; the pond was full of them. “Cor! You’re bleeding Miss! Look at that! Cor! Do you think you’ll die?” They all had to be bundled out and I had a trip to Casualty later that day for an anti-tetanus jab.

Probably the funniest trip was when I took my whole art group, mostly children and early teens, on a visit to the National Gallery. They were enormously shocked at the nudes, particularly those of them who had started off by drawing porn. ”This place! All these dirty pictures!” 

The portraits didn’t help either. “Ugh, they’re so ugly!” they cried.

I had to soothe them by finding some battle scenes, particularly ones at sea. Anything with guns and blood and a sad death scene cheered them up enormously. Fortunately many of our famous artists, or their patrons, seem to have had small-boy tastes in gore and the visit was ultimately a success.

It is hard to imagine this degree of naivety in today’s children, who live in a world of explicit images and wide exposure to culture, but not only was this pre-television age, few of the younger ones had even been to a cinema.

Megan had to deal with officialdom a lot of the time. Most of those who visited to check up on the Centre seemed to have little idea of what we were doing or why, but were fairly easy to convince. In a non-heroic sort of way, we believed heartily in the welfare state, the essential goodness of people and that we were helping the young to better, richer lives. Real old-fashioned socialism. I no longer have any idea if any of these things are true, but I’m glad I followed them. I am a little depressed that the great improvements to people’s lives that we believed to be around the corner still haven’t happened.

My social life was still very good. Mind you, any young man who took me on a date was liable to be tested out by a visit to our Centre. If he did a bit of voluntary work, he was in. If not, he was quickly forgotten. Megan said I was very useful bait to get young male helpers, always the hardest to recruit. She wasn’t bad at it herself and ended up marrying a grand chap with the unlikely first name of Bysshe—his mother had been a sort of admirer of Shelley—and they left not long after I myself had to move on. Their wedding took place in the Centre and was a real London community booze-up.

A couple of months before that, Megan’s elderly father needed a placement and I was only too happy to yield my colourful room to him and share Megan’s flat. I had begun to realise that I would have to move on sometime soon, if only to get back to serious study, but I had started to spend much of my spare time in her flat anyway. I loved the life we lived, she was a good cook and very hospitable, sharing haphazard but nourishing meals with anyone who happened to be around and in need of feeding. Another thing I learned then—and retained—was the pleasure of casual, take-potluck-and-join-the-family-when-you-wish entertaining, leading later on to shared roast Sunday lunches and Thursday evening potluck meals, as my preferred form of hospitality over formal dinner parties.

In the meantime, in the year I lived there, we got so many people involved, both locals and volunteers, that we put on three musicals and some concerts for the old folk, with me as one of the lead singers, but lots of other talent. The art lessons got quietly dropped. Every morning, when it was time for me to catch the bus for Medical School, my group of faithful little followers, five or six of them, would wait outside to escort me to the bus stop around the corner. They would wait with me and when the bus came in sight would line up to be kissed on the cheek and wave till it was out of sight before going to school. The chances were high that no matter what time I got back one or two of them would be hanging around and spread the word.

You have to picture every activity in which I was involved as a sort of medieval or renaissance painting, in which my figure is surrounded by a group of extremely grubby cherubs.