Hi and welcome to this week's words of wisdom from me, Krazy Kevin ... Ha!!
Well what a week it's been; absolutely jam packed full of surprises. Now as you may know, my other half (she who must be obeyed) likes to be in control of things and so, as a general rule, doesn't much appreciate surprises. As I have found out too my cost over the years..
The biggest and best surprise I gave her was when I asked her to marry me live on the radio. After an initial reaction of shock, mixed with disbelief at the plastic ring I gave her as an engagement ring, she said yes.
Another good one (that she also liked) was when I saw a photograph of a Tiffany necklace that she'd ripped out of a magazine and kept in a pretty wooden box. I asked her what it was about and she said she was leafing through a magazine on a flight once and saw the picture. She thought the necklace was just so unusual and beautiful that she'd kept it in a 'wish box' for literally months and occasionally took it out to admire.
So, unbeknownst to her, I borrowed it and had an exact copy made up for her in the Souk for her birthday. (In fact I told her that for the price it would be for her next 10 birthdays!)
However, a recent big surprise that I planned with her mum and dad did not go down so well. They'd decided to surprise her by flying into Bahrain from Australia on November 14 (two days before Wendy's 40th birthday) to have a big family celebration. Their flight tickets had only been booked a couple of weeks and everything was going fine and dandy (or so I thought ) when suddenly Wendy bursts out one Friday morning that that's it, we need to plan a holiday to Aus because we'd not been back for a few years and she was desperately missing her family.
Before I knew it, she'd made the decision and was online booking flights for us to go to Australia in December. I surreptitiously disconnected the internet line and ran outside the house to ring her dad on the mobile and tell him what was happening.
But when I got back she was on the phone to her mum, who put her Dad on, and 'Grandad' didn't do much of a job of coming up with a good white lie.
Wendy went absolutely ballistic at me when she found out the truth, saying she didn't like surprises and how could I not have understood that she really needed to know that her folks were coming etc ... I was only trying to give her a happy surprise but boy did it back fire.
Anyway, guess what happened on my birthday last Friday? The tables were turned on me.
I thought it was just going to be a nice family day with me, Wendy and Hannah. The morning had been nice and relaxing. Then, at about 2pm Wendy says 'why don't you go and have a lie down for a few minutes?'
I thought 'ok, it's my birthday, I can do that' so I took the newspaper and had a read and a snooze, only to be awoken by the doorbell going off.
I staggered to the front door, opened it wearing only my shorts (not a pretty sight) and standing there were our neighbours Paul, Maree and their kids, with Dave and Jo (some other neighbours) popping over to say hello. I said come in and have a coffee and then 10 minutes later the bell goes again. On the doorstep were Stan, Kath and kids also popping over to say hello. Still nothing twigged in my normally highly receptive brain!
During the course of the afternoon the battery of our doorbell nearly stopped working as the house filled up with people who'd been invited by my sneaky wife to come and celebrate my birthday.
Wendy had been planning it for a few days and it was weird because a couple of times I asked her if she'd seen my mobile phone and she kept finding it in places that I didn't think that I had left it; what she had been doing was going through my numbers and inviting people to come round and visit any time after 3pm! The cunning vixen...
I honestly hadn't a clue but I've got to say I had a lovely time and hats off to her for arranging it (and I wasn't a bit upset either).
One of the presents I got was a Nintendo Wii console and of course lots of people were keen to have a go, it was set up and Little Stan was the star of the show with his boxing antics ... so much so that at the end of the day (when nearly everybody had left) I just had to have a go playing the tennis and the boxing and, three days later, I'm still aching after the concerted effort that I gave it.
Now I'm looking forward to getting more games. My wife must be giving me a message to get fit or something, because my other big present was an amazing mountain bike from the guys at Skate Shack. I've not had a bike since I was a boy doing a paper round and Wendy reckons it's time I got back on a bike; possibly because she has to run to keep up with Hannah on hers these days. She and Hannah decorated it at the shop and when it arrived I looked at this shiny beast of a bike and thought this is one beautiful BIG bike!
So the next day we went back to the shop and Ryan and the guys decided a size smaller was better for me. So if you see a largish orange bike with a large wobbly person on board wearing a yellow helmet please give them a wide berth 'cos it will probably be me!
Keep Happy
All my love,
Krazy Kevin