#27: Nairn a Ten-minute town

In the recent holiday period, Nairn has received a fair number of visitors.  Whilst the increase in people on the beach and in the town has brought some increased anxiety for some, it has been great to see so many families enjoying traditional time on the beach and in the sea.  An increasing number of these visitors are either dreaming of living in Nairn (recent comment overheard on the beach ‘imagine living here’ as reported on Nairn Rocks) or are visiting with property searches in mind. Scotland’s house prices reached record highs this month according to Rightmove which has seen its busiest month for sales in a decade. With home working now becoming the longer-term work mode for so many people there is an increase in interest for housing from those seeking a ‘lifestyle change.’  Unsurprisingly those from south of Birmingham and within the commuter belt of London are driving much of this interest. Do read my previous blog post #14 if you are thinking of moving to a remote corner of Scotland which outlines how our family decided on Nairn as our new home.

There are a variety of models emerging through the lockdown period which encourage us to maintain thinking about how we can live, work and shop locally.  In Melbourne, Australia they are developing 20-minute neighbourhoods, an article in the FT recently spoke about 15-minute cities.  We had a friend up visiting from Essex recently looking to retire to Nairn.  One of the common selling points we often find ourselves saying in support of Nairn is that ‘everything you could need is within ten minutes walk or cycle’.  As we all look to build on environmental progress towards carbon-neutral towns and cities it is likely that we are going to see a resurgence in ten-minute towns like Nairn.

What makes a good ten-minute town?  Services and quality of life within ten minutes from the home that doesn’t involve getting in a car.  For example, a good ten-minute town, like Nairn, would have:

• Healthcare facilities 

• Work and employment opportunities

• Schools and care homes

• Shops, pubs and restaurants

• Entertainment and sporting clubs

• Places of worship

• Pocket parks, blue spaces and green spaces linked as nature corridors across the town

• Bus and train stations and stops for accessing places further afield

In Nairn, you have all of these plus the fresh sea air and a sense of peace and quiet that can be quickly obtained from just a few minutes listening to the waves on the miles of sandy beaches.  But far from being the perfect place Nairn still has a lot to do to win a gold standard for the ten-minute town.  There is an investment needed in infrastructure which prioritises walking and cycling - an obvious missing business in the town is a bike hire & maintenance shop.  Whilst the river and beaches are stunning there could be more spaces for nature to move around the town through green corridors.  And there are too many High street shops empty which could become new social businesses or much-needed housing and multi-use sites.  Many of us have recently appreciated just how important the services and quality of life is local to home.  Ten-minute towns like Nairn just might start to flourish again.

#16: How to live on less and still thrive after an income reduction

There have been two, self-imposed, periods in my working life in the past decade when our household income has dropped by about 50% overnight. Both have been associated with significant life choices and change of work direction, moving from secure jobs to starting something new. The first period was when we founded Dementia Adventure back in 2009 and the second was relocating to North East Scotland last year. The first time was when our kids were tiny, this time, not so much.

Maybe you have chosen to start up a social enterprise or have become self-employed in the last year? Maybe you have seen your wages reduced or even wiped out due to the current virus-crisis? The following tips are all things I have tried following a significant drop in income and are aimed at supporting you to live on less, still thrive and stay well.

1. Back-up: Identify who or what is your back-up? Knowing that someone or something is your back-up is often enough to get through your difficult times. Read my previous blog post on Back-Up and identify someone in your life and ask them - will you be my back-up?
2. No food: Well not completely of course, but there is some great evidence associated with intermittent fasting, longevity and physical inflammation reduction. It also helps with food cost reduction - if you’re fasting 2 days a week, it can mean a significant saving (small print - do check medical advice before embarking on any fasting programme).
3. Grow food: We have grown our own food for fifteen years now starting with basil on a window sill, tomato plants in pots and garlic in the small patch of ground in the yard behind our tiny terraced house. You can grow potatoes from seed to plate in about 10 weeks (lettuce in much less) and only need a bucket or container and the seed potatoes. Try cutting the ‘eyes’ out of your existing potatoes and planting these if you can't source seed potatoes at the moment. Growing and eating your own food can provide you with great taste, great nutrition whilst also giving you a green workout, saving you money and can be highly effective at alleviating low mood.
4. Slow food: Fast food deliveries are the fastest way to run out of money and often contribute to physical and mental ill-health, further worsening our peak stress situations. Growing to love oats for breakfast, baked potatoes for lunch and rice and beans or lentils for dinner are cheap staples that have sustained thousands of people for generations. Take your time to eat it too, savour each mouthful, putting your cutlery down - making your smaller meal last longer is another trick for eating less and costing you less.
5. Save to buy: my granddad would say, “put away the money for it each week for six months, and if you still want it after six months, then you can buy it” - often, of course, the thing I had thought I wanted, I no longer wanted by that point. Deferring buying those ‘must-haves’ is another cost reducer.
6. Monthly direct debits: Take a close look at all the regular monthly payments going out of your account and ruthlessly cancel everything except those critical to sustaining your situation. If you are locked in on a contract or have some other tie-in then speak to the provider about a payment holiday and temporarily suspend the payments. If you want or need to be more drastic cancel TV subscriptions and sell the TV and go back to the radio and books, sounds harsh but you might find you have more productive free time. 
7. Moments in nature: Nature is on our doorstep, is free, is ever-changing from one day to the next and can teach us a great deal about frugality, change and happiness. Find some food scraps for the birds, take a seat under a tree and listen to the sounds. Find some moments in nature every day and see how this can bring joy into your situation. Try keeping a nature diary or nature notes.
8. Keep a gratitude journal: Write down three things each day that you are thankful for. Such a simple thing to help you identify the positives relative to your situation.
9. Be ready to grab opportunities: Make time to update your CV, make a phone call to someone in your industry or in the work sector you would like to work in, or to someone you know and admire. Take a free online course, get yourself ready to grab the new work or income opportunity when it comes along. And it will!
10. Start an investment habit: One of the problems this crisis has really brought to light is the fact that so few people have any savings. It sounds counter-intuitive when you are struggling for money but try starting with saving pennies or pounds in a jar or rounding up payments online but cultivate a habit of saving and investing for when you do have more income again. Then when the next crisis happens, you’ll be better prepared. Premium bonds are a safe way of gambling without losing your money and there are many investment products on the market now which are accessible and accept very low entry points for new investors starting as little as £1. Compound interest is your friend so do try and leave the amount untouched until you have to access it. 

The list can go on and if you have lost a significant proportion of income recently making the change to living on less whilst still thriving can be very challenging but you can and will find a way that works for you. Engage with the finances, engage with the support offers available and pay attention to the things which bring you joy - and are free!  My joy yesterday came from this butterfly...

Nairn beach butterfly

Lucky #13: New Charity Venture with Green Hive

Superstition is a rather strange thing but thirteens certainly do have an uncanny way of aligning with positive events in my life. This post brings the 4HQ blogroll to thirteen and I certainly hope this thirteenth post is auspicious because I am pleased to introduce you to my new charity venture as Manager with Green Hive.

The River Nairn to the hills and source beyond

About six months ago I wrote my Future Framework to check against in deciding what matters to me and in assessing the various work opportunities as they presented themselves in Scotland. The advert for Green Hive Manager post came out on Christmas eve in the local paper. As it turned out this could not have been a better gift. It neatly addressed my interests and passions for the environment, innovation and in social sector leadership. After the various application stages I am extremely pleased to have started with this amazing environmental charity based in Nairn. We have the vision to be a local exemplar taking action to address global environmental challenges. We are an inclusive, collaborative organisation which engages the local community in sustainable solutions to bring about a better life for the people and place of Nairn. The breadth of our Green Hive activities ranges from beach and river cleans to repurposing fabrics into bespoke bags and a brand new plastics upcycling workshop. We are just getting started with re-purposing what would otherwise be wasted into beautiful and functional items. Globally, there is a need to move beyond the evidence into action to help the environment thrive. The scale of the challenges can be daunting, but by focusing on what we can do in our local communities we can start to re-imagine a more positive future for all of us.

Do you have your Future Framework in place? Are you ready to seize the next opportunity which comes your way? What would your core interest be? What matters most to you in your next job? For me there is a joy in working locally, for the first time in years, and yet thinking globally. There is an element of time sovereignty in walking to work and not facing a train or car commute. Family and others first is another value which can be upheld in working locally to benefit the community which has so warmly welcomed my family and I. Jobs, now more than ever, can be re-designed flexibly to be home based but I think we will also see more jobs being locally based as we all rise to the environmental challenges in front of us.

The River Nairn out to sea

Since relocating to North East Scotland I have been developing a number of work related projects, call it a ‘portfolio’ or a ‘cocktail career’ - there is a precedent in these parts for people having more than one job and the wearing of many hats is commonplace. Delivering multiple projects requires an appetite for variety and efficient working practices to cope with all the juggling. I like juggling, but what I have learnt is that all these organisational/projects which are work related are all rubber balls - if you drop one in all likelihood they will bounce back. But your health and your family juggling balls are both ‘glass balls’ in that if you drop one of those, they can break. So making decisions about future opportunities has to keep these two balls in the air at all times, and ever be our focus. In the studies of people on their deathbeds, no-one says they wished they had worked more, many wished they had found more time for family and health giving activities. In getting started with Green Hive I am keeping this at the forefront of my mind.

#2: The SHIREs - don’t hold the horses, Helen

I was at the first Scottish Highlands and Islands Rural Economy conference on Thursday in Inverness, (The SHIREs2019) which turned out to be an inspirational event (if you thought this blog was going to be about Shire horses then feel free to skip to the end).  The Scottish Highlands and Islands is an innovative and entrepreneurial place to be. Mike Donald from Harris Gin (which is transforming the community on Harris one beautiful bottle at a time) had us dreaming of sandy beaches and hand-picked sugar kelp drying in the sun. Tom Campbell, founder of the North Coast 500, wowed us all with some seriously impressive economic and marketing stats from one of the world’s most iconic routes, which now has an annual reach of 5 billion people.  Not only is it the ultimate road trip but is the artery and lifeline to a thriving and diverse rural economy in Northern Scotland.  “Rural” is not the problem, it is the solution. Our table discussion covered a wide range of developments including the Scottish Re-Wilding Alliance, wellness tourism and ancestral walks - literally walking in the footsteps of your ancestors, a hillwalkers version of ‘Who do you think you are.’ A great new twist on a walking holiday. 

But it was Helen McAlpine who had the most impact on me yesterday.  Helen, another conference delegate like myself, approached me in the break following my question to the panel.  (By the way; top conference networking tip: always construct a carefully worded question and name yourself and your organisation before asking it when there is an open Q+A session for the whole conference.  This has the effect of drawing people to you in the break. If this scares you, write it down and be the first to put your hand up, so you have to do it.)  My question was about the potential opportunities for people with dementia to benefit from wellness tourism, active travel and the various nature-based activities on offer in some of the world’s best landscapes in the Highlands.  Helen came over because she is starting a new business, supporting people with dementia. What a great thing to be doing. She is just as inspirational as Mike and Tom and is symbolic of a fundamental societal shift as we re-calibrate what it means to live longer lives (you can read my post on the 100-year life and take the 100-year life audit here).

Helen McAlpine

Helen is finishing work as a nurse on Tuesday, after over 20 years in the NHS.  But rather than simply stopping there she is one of a growing number of social entrepreneurs over 50 embarking on setting up social businesses.  An increasing number of studies point towards 45 and 50 being either the average age or most successful ages to start up a business. I am sure we will see this age go up quite soon.  Life experience, common sense, competence, knowledge and agency all make a potent positive mix for those setting up businesses later in life. When we contemplate a 100-year life (which many of us are statistically likely to reach), it follows that the normal three stages of study/work/retire no longer fit.  The authors of 100-year life, Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott, painfully remind us that unless we are saving substantial amounts of money (which is a tiny minority of people, namely those in the FIRE movement) or win the lottery (hope is not a strategy!) then we are going to need to carry on working for financial reasons, but also to answer the search for purpose and meaning in later life.  Establishing businesses in later life will become more common, and this has far-reaching impacts for education and learning, family finances, kinship care and pensions to name but a few of the obvious things.  

There has been a lot of focus on interns over the last decade, which often refers to a student (mostly younger) gaining work experience, often without pay.  The other use of the word intern is to imprison. The next decade we will start seeing more #Re-Terns where older people are the target audience for courses, webinars, incubators and accelerators to support them start and grow their businesses.  The University of the Highlands and Islands are seeing this already with growing demand for their courses from the over 50’s; people like Helen. So rather than wait, don’t hold the horses, be like Helen and get on with that project, that dream idea for a new business and if you happen to be over 50, chances are you will be successful.  Rather than languishing in retirement, take proactive steps to re-educate, re-learn, re-focus and re-tern to work with a sense of freedom and control. Good luck to all the Helens (and Harrys) out there.

Now for the Shire horse bit.  My Dad grew up with Shire horses on my grandfather’s farm in rural Essex.  Sometimes he slept in the barn with them to keep warm. There is something deeply relaxing and awe-inspiring about being next to the powerful weight of a Shire horse.  As we look to run farms and rural economies more sustainably I hope we see a resurgence in the use of Shires in the fields and forests of Scotland. Clearly, big machinery will not be replaced in modern agriculture, but those small plots and awkward steep forest hillsides might yet see Shires on them again.  Check out horse logging by the folks at Permaculture Scotland for more Shire horse joy.