Bless this mountain town.

At a dinner party someone asks seriously "but if you're wearing long johns it's not technically freeballing is it?". You look around and everyone (literally everyone) is wearing green or brown or orange fleeces, zipped up to their necks. Over dinner you get two recipes for nut loaf - both of them genuine, involving both nuts and lentils or adzuki beans and without a smidge of self parody. You plan to make them both sometime soon, after a trip to the co-op.

You walk to work along a street built wide and straight as if for a traffic jam that will never come. The street is peppered with bed and breakfasts, 'lodges', a women's health centre, a colonic irrigation clinic, a decorative plate museum. You can flick a prayer wheel on your way to the corner store for milk.

It is so cold you put all sleeveless tops away in a zip up bag destined for high shelves in cupboards because just seeing them makes you shiver. You give out your phone number as four digits - like you are handing out your extension at work - because you assume all the locals know the first four.

And best of all, it's absolutely expected that you are a painter, writer, singer, weaver, sculptur, performance artiste, musician, vegan chef, shiatsu masseuse, permaculture gardener, healer, that you are into community cultural development or recycled timber, that you work part time, you are part way through planning the perfect chook coop, and that you are happy to be a recluse and also love knowing people who know people who know you.