Persephone Arbour

I met Devam at one of the early growth Centres – ‘Community’ in the late 1970s.   She joined my women’s group there and followed me to the Rajneesh Centre, Kalptaru in Chalk Farm which I ran until 1981. We are all, inadvertently, making global history this year of 2009. I thought someone else’s story of her beginnings in its total innocence and simplicity – might temper the rather jagged world energy in place right now. Persephone

It was not a street that you would write about. To say it was not a life you would write about seems overdoing it, but true to me.

The street was as familiar and as strange as all those terraces of identical doors and windows seem to outsiders. In fact they were not identical at all. Shades of green and brown and the occasional excitement of a still restrained red, to emphasize, my door, my house, my home, my family…..keep out!  

To describe the street itself is important. It ran down a short hill to an identical street with a tap-dancing church hall at the bottom. The top of the street I will ignore as it wandered into other territory and as a child I did not know it. Some events brought the street to life, but on a daily basis it was to be walked or cycled through, to get home.

Four houses at a time were grouped around a passage, dark and scary.

A central path divided the backs of the houses, splitting the’ outside into everyday and best, just like the interior of the houses themselves. As we were at the end of a path our garden ran the entire length adding a few feet, but the space still had an invisible barrier between the yard and the free form of the garden itself.

Our house was two up, two down, and it was a wonder that we all fitted in, which was much more surprising when everyday activities mostly excluded the front room which was for ‘best’ and music practice, and the memorably cold bedrooms.

The living room was the hub of family life. The furniture was utilitarian, bought within the ration book budget or from an auction which my mother would frequent. The solidity of the furniture cramped the space, a sideboard, dining table and chairs, and easy chairs in front of the open fire. I remember scorched legs and chilblained toes and a freezing back as I sat there with fingers in my ears to exclude, ‘what would you like for your tea tomorrow?’ or the football results on the old wireless.

Steep stairs led to the bedrooms, parents at the front and children at the back. The double bed, with a feather mattress, hot water bottles and thick eiderdown, that I shared with my sister, was the only warm space upstairs. The bathroom which led off our bedroom extending over the kitchen below, was a miracle of 1950’s plumbing. This cold uninviting room provided the weekly scrub if the temperamental boiler could be lit without blowing us up or succumbing us to the gas. To prevent this, the window was kept open even in the depths of winter! Daily washing was at the kitchen sink with a kettle full of hot water, or occasionally a tub in front of the living room fire.

The lavatory was halfway down the yard, dark and frightening at night. My sister would come with me and then run away.

The summer was different as we could push the windows up and stare into the yards opposite, although we never got to know or play with the children. Now there was time, and light to pull out boxes of toys and books, and ignore the pressures of school and ‘having to get done’, but in the winter it was hard to have this privacy.

As the outer world denied space and warmth, so the inner world became more attractive and offered so much more.