The Peanut Factory

We're so pleased to share a short extract from Deborah Price's fascinating new memoir The Peanut Factory about living in squats in South London in the late 70s during the emerging counterculture movement. 'Squat life was sex, drugs and punk rock but it wasn’t all fun and games. The Peanut Factory shows Deborah navigating a male-dominated scene, moving every few months and living with drug dealers, sex workers, people on the run and working-class kids like her. Despite the chaos, the squatters were a family. They were kids creating their own rules. Making art. Living life on the fly. The Peanut Factory is an ode to the youthful rebellion of the 1970s and to London itself.'

The Railton Road squat was occupied by a crowd of gay men who co-existed happily with the local community and during the riots were at the barricades on the front line, chucking bricks with the best of them. Getting my hair cut was exciting and as far removed from a normal hairdresser as it could be. For a start, the house was always full of people.

‘It’s a knocking shop,’ explained Conor, the hairdresser. ‘If boys don’t have a room, they come here. We feel it’s a public service.’ There did seem to be trails of slightly sheepish men coming up and down the stairs at all times of the day and night.

Secondly, there was no mirror in the room, so I was never quite sure what was being done until it was finished. ‘Ta-da’ Conor would say and show me his handiwork in a small hand mirror.

The first time I went I was feeling adventurous and fed up with the traditional long hair with fringe that I had had since my teens. With my foray into new music and abandonment of the hippy look, I had inched the length up, but it still wasn’t anything very interesting.

Conor raised an eyebrow as I settled into the chair and put a grubby towel round me and sprayed my crop with water. 

‘Oh, just do whatever,’ I said.

‘Shall I dye it as well?’ 

I paused to think.

‘It’ll take a while,’ he said. 

I had the whole day and Conor had a minion who was making tea, so I threw caution to the winds.

‘Oh go on then,’ I said.

‘I’ll have to go quite short to get rid of this perm. Is that OK?’

I nodded, speechless. It felt like the end of an era.

When he was finished, all that I knew was that everything felt light and I smelt of bleach. There seemed to be a lot of hair on the floor and I felt like Jo March in Little Women. I paid and squinted in the hand mirror and spent the whole journey home trying to see my reflection in the bus and shop windows. I couldn’t see very clearly. I thought one or two people gave me a bit of a look, but I wasn’t sure.

I got home and clattered down the stairs to see if Tessa was in.

‘Oh, my good God,’ she said. ‘Come into the light in the kitchen.’ 

Desperate to find out what the haircut looked like? Visit the Guts Publishing website to buy The Peanut Factory and read more about Deborah herself: https://www.gutspublishing.com/the-peanut-factory