LIFE IN LONDON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 20057, 21 September 1920, Page 9

LIFE IN LONDON.

The worries of life after the war are, | writes a Loudon correspondent in “The j Auckland Star,” in a way more trying than those of war itself. *The war had to be met in some sort heroically, oven if ono were, no hero. One just ' had to set one’s teeth and meet tho | trial that was, so we all hoped, a tern- j porary one. Onco it was over, then ono j could breathe. But now that tension, strung to its limits by the length and j hugeness of the struggle, is relaxed, j there is reaction in which it is difficult I to make even the normal effort against life’s daily trials. Most ~f us are feeling like that, and'so it is good to hear of a case in which circumstance was faced and seized with boldness in the subduing,of life’s worst worry—housing. Two New Zealand girls attacked the problem—and solved it!—-in the midst of war stress, and now they are' able to sit back in comfort and to face those other worries of higher, and ever higher, cost of In ing. ' . j In the West End of London, within range of a Royal Palace, right in the i very current of life which is Life in London, there is a turning almost—m summer—quite concealed. It is flanked on the one hand bv the houses of an important street, big imposing houses, on the other by the waif of a. churchyard. The turning leads into a blind alley, a long one down both sides of which there stand stables, now convert- : ed into garages, tho annexes of tho lordly dwellings in the vicinage. Lab-' elled “ mews - ” in their early incarnation. they still retain tho name. Beloiv are large shod-like rooms for garaging 1 cars, above rooms for chauffeurs. Now, these two rows of garages facing each other are as commonplace as can be, of the perfectly square-faced design of a child's drawing of a- house front. But one now is longer than the | other, and the extra house is bigger and looks across not at a replica of its j own plain face .but on the leafv shades lof the churchyard. Inside the place gives an impression of spaciousness and the weathered timbers of the old louseboxes—relics of its “mews” days—an old wooden staircase, very steep, leading to tho dwelling rooms above in the half light make tin's “hall” and stairway, look like a mediaeval dwelling. Up stairs all is modem, nothing mc•fueyal. with good lighting and an artistic setting. M hen the place was discovered bv these New, Zealand girls all was gloom, disrepair and cobwebs, but with the eye of presence and of practioalitv they saw what could be made iof them. 'Hie common wall papers ; wore stripped off, and ’dam colour wash succeeded them. A bathroom -and com- ; fort of comfort, luxury of luxury a geyser was installed, as was a gas stove, in the kitchen. Carnets of a warm and artistic red, woodwork painted in harmony will) them and tho walls and there behold a charming, an artistic a comfortable home. Bright wolf-lit rooms, ehintz-icovered ami well-cu-shioned chairs and chesterfields inviting lo rest at tho end of a day's war work and just as strenuous’ peace work, these complete the scheme. IVhat more could voii ask for, and at a rent to make those of us newly served with notices from our landlords of rise in rent undo’' four scheduled heads, faint with envy! This sort of thing would, of course, have been possible during or since thy war only at a big.exnciidilure bv hired labour, of something running into a three-figure outlay for labour alone, but those versatile New Zealanders, quailin'’ at. the cost of getting the British workmen to' do it, did not email at the task of doing it themselves. So here, hidden ir the heart of Loudon in its most ex I dnsive area, young New Zealand hm provided an object lesson on how to do it even when it is tho big-bugbear of .the moment, its hardest proposition—the housing question.