Best Ever Days

My Dear Fellows & Dear Princess Normal,

Like the hero of Hi-Fidelity, I am an inveterate curator, list-maker and assessor of things, from Worst Albums I Have Actually Owned* to Best Ever Days.

I find that entries in that second list are often preceded by Worst Ever Days. It's like for me to really appreciate something, it has to have been preceded by utter poo.

For example, The Day We Arrived in Singapore is a Best Ever Day. This is because it followed our leaving Vietnam. Vietnam was BAD. Cazza was sick the whole time, I lost my luggage and we got into a row with a Vietnamese cyclo driver because he insisted he was our driver around the whole of Vietnam. 

Not that I want to crush a fellow's dreams, but a bicycle is not necessarily the best way to get around an entire country.

But arriving in Singapore was so amazing. We were tired, smelly and hungry and arrived in the country of pretty Xmas lights, telly, air conditioning and room service.

Some of my other best ever days include RX nights out, Smuha in Shetland, sitting on a beach in Keri Keri, that night Fat Pete came round to watch The Pentagon Wars AND Deep Rising, the Sound of Disco on Millennium Eve, and all of our days that include the arrival of cats.

And this day last year. The "One Year Ago" button on blip is there to remind me that this time last year I took Murphy Dog for a walk with the Princess and then we adjourned back to hers for a cup of tea and a cheese board with the BIGGEST CUBE OF QUINCE IN THE WORLD.

Today, by comparison, was a 5/10 sort of a day. I went to work, which was just all right. I did get an email from Kathryn in Hamilton telling me that I was wonderful (actual words I'm not kidding). But then I got another email from Tamsin in Whangarei which seemed to imply that I had come up with this new software as an act of spite against her, personally.

Eff off Tamsin. Kathryn will kick your arse if I ask her to.

So I was prepared to mark this day down. Just file it with the multitude of other forgettable, bland, blah days. Another paycheck earned, another dinner made, another cat cuddled; it had highs and lows but came out as a solid C.

But then this little chap alighted in a tree in front of me on my way home. Don't get me wrong, I have seen tuis before, and I hear them singing all the time. I can hear them as I type this.

However, I've never had one sit right in front of me and sing his little heart out before. I've never been able to look one right in the eye while they do their Celine Dion impressions. Usually they perch waaaaayyyy up high and I'm instead looking them directly up the bum, which is dangerous thing to do given the known toilet habits of birds. 

So I stood for 5 minutes listening to his whoop-whoop-tweet-tweet-HONK song. I even got my camera out and recorded video for the last minute of it. So you can listen in and see why my day went from a C to an A in just five minutes.

S.

* "McCartney II" by Paul McCartney, "Kilroy Was Here" by Styx, "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, "This Ole House" by Shakin' Stevens and the "Ghostbusters" soundtrack.