Interview with Anna Coates

Anna Coates

Anna Coates, a warm woman, elegant in green and surrounded by pictures of handsome great-grandchildren is Islington through and through. Born in Tysoe Street and evacuated in the Blitz, she finished school at ten. She started work as a ‘commis waitress’ in the Bagatelle Restaurant in the West End at 13, “So I grew up and found my way around the world quite fast”.

Later she moved to a house in Amwell Street, where her husband was born and died and owned a sandwich bar in Waldorf Street. She has been volunteering for 25 years. It started because she was cast down by her mother’s death and a social worker encouraged her to visit a volunteer lunch club: but the moment she got there she knew that she wanted to help out. She has run telephone lines, calling vulnerable people and being a friendly contact for them, supported lunch clubs, organised holidays, canal trips, day trips and parties, fed thousands, helped build people’s confidence and created real social worlds for them.

What do you need to be a volunteer, I ask? “Common sense, adaptability, a willingness to do anything” she says – a volunteer needs to “draw other people out”. She is quite clear that volunteering has been one of the most rewarding things in her life. Of course, she is very good at it, a capacity to organise and work with people has flowered as she helped others. “Being useful” she says “gives you a purpose, and it’s thinking about other people that is so good”.