But bubbling below the surface is a subversive hub of alternative living, a legacy of the radical goings-on from Dartington Hall, just down the road, where Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst's vision of a rural utopia gathered steam in the 1920s. Indeed, there are more new age "characters" than you can shake a rain stick at, more alternative-therapy practitioners per square inch than anywhere else in the UK and the town was once named "capital of new age chic" by Time magazine.
My family moved here when I was 10. A child of relentlessly suburban mindset, I found the town's granola outlook unsettling. I balked at the indigenous footwear worn by Totnesians – multicoloured pieces of hand-stitched leather called "conkers" – and longed for a world where it was not atypical to own a TV and talk about Dallas rather than nuclear disarmament. My fear growing up in this neck of the woods was that people would continue to get even weirder. So it was probably just as well that I had left when Rob Hopkins arrived in 2005 and let loose the Great Unleashing, aka the launch of Transition Town Totnes (TTT).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/06/totnes-transition-towns-ethical-livingIt is not surprising that this is happening in Totnes. The pretty South Devon town on the River Dart with a population of about 9,000 is as trendy as an eco-carrier bag. Its reclusive, secular patron saint is the otherworldly singer Kate Bush, who has her home nearby.
It boasts a telephone directory of counsellors and therapists and a thesaurus of workshops. A stroll up its steep main street reveals a score of organic and eco-friendly food and clothes shops. There are a further half-dozen stores peddlling stones and crystals and a Friday market that smells of marijuana and incense.
The local funeral parlour is called Green Fuse and has a picture of a flower-power coffin in its window. while the long-established gents' hairdresser actually describes itself as "alternative".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/3359800/Property-in-Totnes-Wizards-of-the-wacky-West.htmlI'm not criticising everything they do - actual thought about real energy, as opposed to "crystal energy" etc., is fine. But there seems to be an inevitable slide towards "all science is dangerous" woo among some who decide the age of fossil fuels is over.
= new reply since forum marked as read