I remember being kinda chuffed when attending an art exhibition (20 years ago - Sheesh) and stumbling across a nude drawing of a girlfriend which I had no idea my girlfriend had secretly commissioned. This was definitely Out of the Blue . However the reason it was exhibiting was because my girlfriend no longer had any interest in giving it to me for my birthday as we had broken up .... so I had to dig deep into my wallet and buy it for myself! It does though still hang in my house. I wonder what ever became of Kim?

LOL!! That's such a funny story!!

That is priceless!

Okay, I've racked my memory bank trying to think of a surprise.... thing is, I have a good sense of these things, so I can always sniff out a surprise when it's in the planning stages.

One that I just recalled was a very simple one. I don't make a big deal about birthdays. So I don't have parties and I don't remind people what day it is. So most years, it goes by without any event.

One year, it was late and most of the world had already gone to bed. I logged on line and started chatting with a dear friend on ICQ. All of a sudden he went silent and wouldn't answer my messages. So I just thought he must have gone to bed without saying goodnight.

About 20 minutes later, I heard the rumble of his car. (He had a very loud one.) The funny thing is that he was trying to sneak in to the compound, but although he had switched off his engine, he had a turbo-timer that kept it going. (Ok, so I digress)

I had no idea what was going on. He wasn't the type to remember my birthday, and the only reason he's show up like that at that hour meant that something was wrong, but we had just been talking and he seemed fine.

So I ran down and had the door open before he could get out of his car, and kinda ruined it.

He had gone to a late night grocery store and bought me a cake with a candle. It wasn't very good, but I loved it!

After the laughter had died down, we sat and ate cake and talked. Perfect surprise!