D’you know what she’s gone and done? Do you?

Of course you don’t. Allow me to explain.

In addition to her many other virtues, she’s an Eddie Izzard fan. And he’s touring. He’s in London at Christmas, playing Wembley. So, I thought, it’d be a nice festive surprise for her if I booked tickets for the pair of us to go and see him. However, I know from bitter experience that if I want to do something on a specific date, I need to make sure that her family haven’t organised something, or that she doesn’t have something band-related to do. It’s not that she’s always booked up months in advance, exactly, more that her family and bandmates have a unique knack of planning something on a date when we were hoping to do something. Especially if I have a surprise planned.

So I send her a cryptic email, basically saying that she wasn’t to allow anything to be planned for the evening of the 22nd of December. Yes, I know it’s a hell of a long time in advance, but this time I wasn’t taking any chances. I wanted it to be a surprise, so I didn’t say why, although I hinted that it might involved going away, and said that she’d be back in time for Christmas, so not to worry.

Last night she came round, and naturally, demanded to know what the surprise was. And I refused to tell. As one would expect. After a short time, she gave up on it.

However, the next words out of her mouth were (approximately) “I saw an ad in the Evening Standard today – Eddie Izzard is touring. I don’t know when, but we should find out and get tickets.”

I’m a dreadful actor. Surprised ruined.

She swears blind that she genuinely had no idea that he was playing on the 22nd of December, that the ad she saw didn’t have dates on it, and that her mentioning it immedaitely after giving up on the surpise thing wasn’t some scheme to check if that’s what it was. It was a genuine, honest-to-god coincidence, and not a devious attempt to ruin my surprise.

Still I’m going to get my own back.

I’m going to take someone else.