Back in Perth - No More Nomad For Now...

It is soooo nice to be have my own space again after six years of sharing and living in some wild set-ups. I'm really appreciating having somewhere warm, dry and flat to sleep, having a cooker and washing machine and all that convenient stuff. The flat's light and bright, in good condition and quiet at night for the city centre. My daughters are nearby - it was lovely to be around for their birthdays which are both in March, the crocuses on the inches always remind of the those happy times when they were born and when they were young.

Crocuses on the South Inch  (parks are called Inches in Perth...)

My oldest friends are up here too, from early therapy days and right back to childhood. It's time to reflect on the last few years, focus first on building up a therapy practice here then think where else to best put my energy. Time for a bit of healing for myself, for tendonitis from the heavier eco-work and to carry on processing all the recent emotional and physical upheaval. 

Perth is a good place to live. I struggle just being in one place for any length of time but I feel less of a misfit here than in most places. It's easy to escape to hills, lochs, woodlands, rivers and some real wilderness. I can get pretty much anything I need on foot and the big cities aren't far away for anything else, concerts or whatever - of course, how much do we really need anyway?

On a walk round Kinnoull Hill, just quarter of an hour from the centre of Perth

A brilliant, wild old pine tree in the Blackwood forest at Loch Rannoch

If any town is well set up for a Power-down, Transition process away from fossil fuel it might well be Perth. There's plenty of open land around, plenty of water and not that many people, there's more people in London than there are in the whole of Scotland. There's hydro power, the wind flow statistics are high and there's huge untapped potential for power-generation from tidal races.

Perth's a good size, it's big enough to have a good range of shops, coffee shops, book shops and a concert hall but small enough to feel like a big village. The down side is the number of drunks staggering about anytime after breakfast and the violence (a friend of L's was badly beaten up a few nights ago in an unprovoked attack from four idiots - but they may have been idiotic enough to have got themselves caught on CCTV...). Many parts of Perth are in decay and there's lots of empty shops in the centre of town. There isn't the feeling of general over-exploited desperation I feel down South though. I used to get an uneasy feeling of impending disaster in towns like Worthing and Eastbourne - I get it here too but not as strong.

After a couple of heavy weeks writing, I've got my leaflets and new therapy website up and running, www.ian watt health.co.uk - please have a peek at that - and please send the link on to anyone you know who might benefit from treatment, (i.e. pretty much everybody), thanks!