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Essay

Surprise!

By Caroline Pover


夫の誕生日に用意したドッキリ

先日、ご主人の30歳の誕生日祝いに、ポーヴァーさんは「びっくりプレゼント」を用意しました。 英国在住のご主人の姉夫妻を密かに日本に呼ぶというものです。 綿密な計画が功を奏し、手はずはすべて整ったものの、直前に思いがけず引っ越しすることに。 何も知らないご主人は古い家具を捨てたので、新居の客室は空っぽのままです。 バレないように部屋の用意をする方法は・・・!?

I love planning surprises for people. I think I get more excited about other people's birthdays and celebrations than my own!

It was recently my husband Richard's 30th birthday, and I spent nine months planning a big surprise for him. I planned to fly his sister Isabel and her husband Marc to Japan for a surprise visit. I knew Richard would never guess they were coming for a number of reasons: Isabel and Marc have a daughter who is only just over one year old. Moreover, Isabel is a primary school teacher. Primary school teachers rarely take time off during term, and my husband's birthday was in early July, which is term time in the U.K. And to top it all off, Isabel was six-months pregnant!

But Isabel and Marc decided to leave little Mabel at home with Grandma, Isabel's school gave her time off because of the special circumstances and because it was a great opportunity to visit Japan, and Isabel's doctor said that it was fine for her to fly. Of course, Richard had no idea that this was going on!

All my plans were going well, until something unexpected happened. We ended up moving house just one month before the surprise guests arrived.

When we moved, Richard decided that he wanted to get rid of our old furniture and buy new things. I wouldn't have minded this at all, except that, naturally, he was in no hurry to decorate the spare room, because he didn't know that guests were coming. So I had to secretly plan to decorate the spare room too! It was rather stressful but very exciting.

So I gathered all the little Japanese ornaments, etc., that we had collected over the years and hid them in a box. I took secret trips to home improvement and furnishing stores and secretly bought a bed, bedside tables and a bookshelf, which I had delivered to my office. I secretly bought bedding and some Japanese pictures, and hid everything under my wedding dress! I decided to decorate the room on the day Isabel and Marc would arrive, and got started as soon as Richard left for work that morning.

Some of my friends turned up to help. We had the furniture delivered from my office, and set to work assembling it ourselves. We hung pictures, decorated the bookshelf, hung a kimono above the bed, ironed the bedding, changed lampshades, and blew up 100 balloons to fill the hallway. It was crazy but so much fun! We all worked together and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It took five hours, and we finished just when Isabel and Marc arrived in Tokyo from the airport. Perfect timing!

After a couple of hours' rest, Richard called to say that he was on his way home. We were so excited. I hid Isabel and Marc in the wardrobe in the new room, and went downstairs. I took him upstairs and into the new room, and he couldn't believe what I had been up to. He couldn't understand why I had decided to decorate the room. I asked him if he would like to see what I had done with the cupboard, then opened the door and his sister and brother-in-law popped out. He could not believe his eyes. It was such a wonderful moment!



Shukan ST: Aug. 4, 2006

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