If you were forced to wear one outfit over and over again, what would it be?

I have an outfit that goes everywhere with me. Under any unusual or unplanned circumstances I can appear perfectly prepared. My failsafe garment is a long, black,  linen dress. At more than ten years old it is a little grey with wear but it still fits the category of little black dress. It can easily be dyed, again, to be a Bible-black dress worthy of her original beauty . Most importantly the dress has two side pockets. I will never again buy a dress without side pockets. Whenever I travel it travels with me. Even on the most minuscule of trips.

Last week it went to Wales with me. On its own it could have been a beach dress but blinged up with some massive beads it could easily have taken me to a posh restaurant or an evening of live music.

The beads come from an old broken necklace and some beaded curtain tie backs from the eighties. The beads travel with the dress. They are the basic kit, but if packing space allows two other items squeeze in next to the little black dress.

A pair of Moccasin mules from Canada and a long length silk coat in the style of a Gentlemans Smoking Jacket from Hong Kong.

While we were in Abersoch I admired the hat our host Tricia was wearing. Then randomly in my favourite Charity shop I found one with a very similar vibe.

With just this one additional item my go anywhere kit could go anywhere. The hat is by an internationally renowned Milliner Sandra Phillips. Posh Wedding, The Royal Enclosure or a Buckingham Palace Garden Party. I have the full kit and caboodle.

The beauty of this capsule, get me looking fab outfit is the cost.

Dress £100 Flax from Dulwich Trader 10 years ago.

Beads approx £5 made from a broken necklace and curtain tiebacks from a Charity shop. Recreated 5 years ago.

Moccasin mules, £20 Zara Sale, Toronto. Last year

Silk Smoking Jacket, £20, Zara Ultra reduced Sale, Hong Kong Airport. 7 years ago.

Silk and straw hat. £10. Sandra Phillips at the local Hospice Charity Shop today.

£135 spent over the past 10 years on this capsule wardrobe. The dress may well have been worn 500 times, could easily be more.

Nothing phases this ensemble. I have even slept in the dress and babies love the beads, they are indestructible.

Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.

Goodness me that Prosecco hit the spot last night. It bubbled gently into the fissures, sulci and gyri of my brain and loosened up random thoughts that I felt obliged to share. Thank goodness it was a talking party and not a dancing one. Undoubtedly Prosseco would have given me the misguided belief that I was flexible.

On the way to the party we found a little moss heart. Tossed to the ground by birds impatient to get their nests built.

It is the time of year when something soft and yielding provokes a sinking feeling as we walk in our street. The instant reaction is that it is a poo left behind by an inattentive dog owner, or worse a fox. Such a sense of relief when it is just a bit of carelessly dropped moss. The little heart had three locations to pose in on our short walk.

I would not have been so creative with a poo.

‘Jot down the first thing you think of’

It could have been worse.

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.