The best thing that happened today was pegging the laundry outside to dry on the line. I have been getting lazy lately and putting it in the tumble dryer, but today was a beautifully sunny day so I had no excuse at all. However I have yet to bring it in, and our enclosed back garden is tempting me to cross my fingers against it raining, and just bring it in tomorrow...

The best thing that happened today was admitting to myself that I didn't want to take my bike to be fixed today. It's been out of action for a couple of weeks since I buckled the back wheel, and I've been waiting for a day off so I can take the wheel in question to the repair shop and get a new one. Today is the first day of my week off work, and all morning I have had this nagging voice telling me I should really go and sort that out, but then I realised that the reason I have been putting it off is that I don't want to go today. I want to potter around the house, make jam, watch "Little House on the Prairie", sort out my room, clear my desk so there is space for me to sit and write.

I can fix my bike tomorrow, or even the day after that. I have the whole week :)

The best thing that happened today was a phonecall from my friend Rosie, following up tentative plans we had made for today. I went round to hers, we made potato salad to take to a potluck dinner & book swap event in Armley, where I managed to offload a number of books including a Herman Hesse collection I have spent *years* beating myself up for not reading (recommended to me by a terribly depressing ex-boyfriend), and picked up a couple of books that are actually interesting and relevant to me NOW. I also got a kilo of ripe apricots that were going free at the greengrocers, which I am going to make into jam tomorrow. This will be the first jam I have ever made, I'm pretty excited.

The best thing that happened today was getting to dig my New York guide books out again, as I'm off there for work at the beginning of September, guiding my boss - who is blind - to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities / Human Rights conference. Sometimes I love my job! So that means I'll be in San Francisco, home for a week, then back off across the Atlantic again. Phew!

The best thing that happened today was being asked to clear out a chest of drawers in my parent's spare room that used to be in the room I grew up in. I found a heap of letter to me from my grandmas, years before they had passed away. There was also a letter that I wrote to my cousin when we were eleven or twelve which never got sent as she died the week I wrote it. There was also a huge stack of letters that I'd written to myself in about 1996. It was all really sad to discover it all today, and it's hard to think about this as the 'best thing'; but those letters I wrote to myself when I was fifteen have just helped me understand a little bit about how and when I first started to go insane and suffer from mental health problems. Those letters made so much sense to me then. They spoke of the pressures and the sadnesses; ones I couldn't comprehend properly at the time. All these years later, I could never pinpoint the beginnings of the sadness that lives in my head, I'd forgotten how long it had been there. Today I learned about parts of myself I'd long forgotten.

The best thing that happened today was going to get my hair cut at "Hair We Go" at lunchtime. Tucked away in the corner of the Merrion Market (Leeds), no appointment necessary and only £6. It still looks pretty much the same, only the eagle-eyed would notice the difference, but my fringe is now subltly shorter which means I can see where I am going when I cross the road.

The best thing that happened today was getting to meet Sabrina Chapadjiev for the first time, loooong after we first started communicating via the internet.
She was in Manchester, over from the US, reading from her edited book Live Through This. And, as I'd already kinda expected and predicted, I was wowed by her intelligence, passion, and her commitment to communicating about the themes in the book; creativity and self destruction.
It was such a joy and an honour to finally get to meet her and share a moment in time with her that felt so very positive and life-affirming.