By: Blonde Two

There are some words set to strike fear into an outdoor girl’s heart, examples might be:

‘Avalanche’, ‘accident’, ‘flood’, ‘tsunami’, ‘earthquake’ and ‘smart casual’

Out of all of these I have experienced three, having never been in an avalanche or witnessed a tsunami.

My accident, flood and earthquake experiences were all tricky at the time but completely survivable. I am not so sure however about ‘smart casual’.

A wee while ago, Not-At-All-Blonde turned the phrase into ‘smasual’ (she has her mother’s love for inventing words). I think it was an attempt to make it more palatable… kind of her but it didn’t work.

Working as a freelance writer from home is great for the freedoms and interest it gives me but it has not been fantastic for my wardrobe ability. Apart from realising that a new jumper now equals three hours work, I go each day from tracksuit over swimsuit, to swimsuit with neoprene hat, to bright red dry robe, to tracksuit over nothing, to all of the thermal layers I possess in order to warm up after a sea swim. None of this can be classed as anything near approaching ‘smasual’.

Today Blonde One and I are off to meet this year’s new batch of Ordnance Survey Champions (plus some of our old friends) and do lots of chatting, learning stuff and being photographed. Strangely I am entirely comfortable with the being photographed bit of this (photoshoots aren’t quite commonplace yet but it was quite good fun last year). What I have been struggling with is what on earth I am supposed to wear to dinner afterwards.

This is plainly silly, I have plenty of smart clothes (left over from teaching) and I have plenty of casual clothes (and am wearing most of them) surely all I have to do to achieve ‘smasual’ is put some kind of combination together. I have a selection packed in my bag (we are off to posh hotel land). I will let you know whether I choose the bright pink ball gown with walking boots or the grungy vest top with black velvet trousers… maybe this ‘smasual’ thing is quite exciting after all.

PS Did we tell you who we had dinner with on Monday?