Later I was to find myself very often in the same predicament, but it is always the first impact that tells, and I began to be just a little frightened. I spent my fourpence on four boxes of matches and walked from King’s Cross to the Holborn end of Shaftesbury Avenue. It was a favourite hunting ground of mine in my outcast days, not so crowded as Piccadilly Circus and with far less competition, and generally I found it lucky.

I hung about the pavement, but my star was not in the ascendant, I could not spot a likely client. My judgment seemed to leave me, I lost initiative and the result was immediately apparent. None of the passersby reacted to me⁠—I was just one of the crowd and, therefore, negligible. The same sort of thing happens at any social gathering. You either make yourself felt or you are unnoticed; if you do not project your personality, the stream passes by and leaves you on one side.