What DO you buy a man for his birthday who wants nothing?!

SO, you know, men and their birthdays.

Stressful.

Futile.

Impossible.

“What d’you want for your birthday?” we start asking without hope, at least six weeks beforehand.

The tone becomes increasingly desperate as the Big Day looms.

“Ah, now, I don’t need anything,” my husband says every year, sounding like Uncle Colm in Derry Girls.

“All I want is a bit of peace. I’m not a man for the big fuss.”

Which, of course, is a subtle dig at me, because I love being made a fuss of and I have an endless birthday wish list that I will provide at a moment’s notice to anybody who asks.

My son rings me up.

“God, Mam, what’ll I get Dad for the birthday?” he asks.

My mother-in-law rings.

“For God’s sake, would you tell me what he’d like,” she says.

“The fella’s impossible to buy for.”

We have all tried and tried, dear Lord we have tried.

All the years and all those failed presents.

There was the super-dooper hi-tech digital thing with the snazzy red laser on it, for which he thanked me profusely and which I found still in its box under the bed a week or two later while I was doing the hoovering.

There were the expensive shirts whose textures he decided he didn’t like next to his skin.

There were the lovely jumpers and the cosy teddy-bear fleeces that went into the wardrobe and never came out again.

There were the state-of-the-art designer hiking and trekking jackets complete with base layers. There were walking trousers, trendy beanies with fleece interiors, fabulously warm scarves.

Photographs of his music icon, the late, great Rory Gallagher, that were tracked down and presented to him were left in their plastic wrapping and never framed.

There were the high-spec, ultrasonic-grade, insulated work-gloves my son once researched at length and in detail and, which he presented with enormous pride on the great day.

Months later the gloves were discovered, still in their packaging, in the boot of the car.

There were devices that helped you find your keys or phone if you mislaid them.

Devices that you stood or laid your phone on for charging it - even when it was in its case.

There were hand-crafted wooden bowls. Paintings. Vouchers. Expensive slippers. Lovely birthday cards. Hats insulated with fleece. Woolly hats with flaps to cover your ears. Hats with head-torches.

Nope.

He says no to birthday meals in restaurants. No to cakes. No to weekends away. No to going to London to see a big musical. No to birthday get-togethers in a pub with all his music buddies. Birthday cards, he believes - in fact, any kind of card - are a scam, a complete waste of money for the witless.

On one memorable occasion, defeated and fed up, worn down by months of pleading with him to let us arrange a big celebration of a landmark birthday, family, colleagues and friends just surrendered.

Hands up, we said.

He got money. He got peace. And he got No. Fuss. Whatsoever. And we’ve never heard the end of it since.

In the end, we figured, he doesn’t like a fuss, but he does, secretly.

So, back to recently and to my son.

“What will I give him?” he wanted to know.

“Not a notion, boy,” I said.

However, shortly before his birthday, my husband became suddenly extremely cheerful.

The reason, it emerged, was that the company which appears to have become his sole reason for tolerating life on earth, had emailed him to say that it was about to have a sale.

Oh God.

Rutlands.

I have seen emails occasionally from this company, which sells a huge, incomprehensible, bewildering and, to me, utterly boring range of things like Digital Angle Finders, Phenotic Router Tables, Hinge Jigs, Mitre Squares and Drill Jigs.

But my husband loves Rutlands. With a passion.

Rutlands, to his mind, is the epitome of corporate perfection - get him talking about the quality of its products, its customer service, its sheer down-to-earth decency as a company, and you have Uncle Colm to the tee.

Rutlands is the Bees’ Knees and the Cat’s Pyjamas at a time when the entire world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Gotcha!

I offered a sizeable contribution for the Rutland’s Sale for his birthday.

He brightened.

There was no mention of Not Needing Anything. No mention of A Bit of Peace or No Fuss Required.

I immediately texted my son.

Not long afterwards, a sum of money landed in my husband’s account along with a text from my son wishing him a happy birthday.

The text explained that, given my husband’s aversion to birthday cards, the son had added €2 extra to his personal Rutland’s Birthday Contribution.

“You’re all heart,” my husband texted back.

Then he had a thought.

He sent a follow-up.

The price of a stamp, my husband opined, should also be included in the son’s Rutland’s Sale Birthday Contribution as well.

The son replied, unperturbed.

He had already taken the price of a stamp into account, he said.

One euro had been allocated for the card and one euro for the stamp.

The apple, as they say, never falls too far from the tree.