Describe something you learned in high school.

I am warming to these prompts for blogs from Jetpack. I pick up the ones I can best work with. Yesterday this delicious little picture fell at my feet and it would have been criminal not to use it in a blog.

I had to go to Sutton Harbour last night to pick up some printing from a company that I am new to using. They are incredibly efficient and helpful and had printed posters for a gardening event that I did some artwork for.

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They were so efficient that I was left with an hour and a half of parking, to use on a sunny evening, in a harbour with blue skies, warm sun and tinkling rigging.

It was perfect serendipity to find this wonderful heart shaped mound of lichen next to a discarded party star in the tracks of a discarded rail track.

Which neatly brings me back to ‘ Describe something you learned in High School’

I was painfully reserved in secondary school. Margaret Tabor Secondary Modern did not get the lofty title of ‘High’ in its name until it became a comprehensive school and became, Tabor High.

I was painfully reserved at age 11, I know shy is not the correct word. Painfully reserved, exactly describes it. Separated from my best friend from Primary School, Manor Street. I floundered in a classroom full of people I didn’t know.

It is obvious to any reader that the names of my two schools are not part of an elite system. I had the free, state- provided, education in my local town.

Being cut adrift from my best friend at 11 made me regress into my natural social position of being on the outside looking in. I am naturally an observer and for the most part I spent the years between age 11 and 18 observing. Occasionally slipping on the mantle of a gregarious person but knowing in my heart that I was just pretending. I learned a massive amount at ‘High’ school but perhaps the most important thing was to be an observational person who can comfortably wear a cloak of gregariousness; while still having the ability to find the magic of a heart and a star in a post-industrial landscape.

Anatomy of a Serendipitous Observation captured on a smartphone whilst waiting for two dogs to eliminate.

Old railway track from the time when this area of the harbour was the Tin Wharf exporting tin from the Tamar Valley all over the world for centuries. Tamar Valley tin has been discovered all over Europe wherever the Romans went.

Broken glass from the party pub just behind this picture. Plymouth Barbican is the Plymouth night-time economy hub.

Lichen Heart , in the South West Lichen thrives in our climate. Before humans this part of England was covered by Atlantic Rainforest.

Confetti star , the Barbican is a magnet for Stag and Hen do adventures. Finding a star was truly serendipitous. Confetti can be pretty and joyful but it can also be earthily pagan.

Thanking the blogging Goddess for a happy Star yesterday.