How to shop for a Man?

How do you do it? I have no idea. Help needed!!!

The Man has a birthday coming up. It is not for some time, which gives me time to buy him a great "kick-arse, throw it right out of the park, best ever, so much better than my ex-girlfriend's gift, wow what a great idea, how did you know I always wanted this" gift. For a variety of reasons, the main one being he is just lovely, I want this year's birthday gift to be spectacular.

Problem is that The Man has very specific and quite limited tastes:

• Clothes are out. He has some. He quite likes them. That will do him for now.


• He has plenty of books (including some from me) and doesn't have time to read them all as it is. If he really wants a book he would buy it.


• He likes art but thinks that good art is expensive and that it is hard to buy art for someone else.


• He likes a clutter free home where items serve a function. Anything he deems extraneous gets thrown out.


• He likes travel, but it would be hard to surprise him with anything as he has a busy diary, and he is an international travel sort of guy, not a "let's get away for a dirty weekend in Sydney" type.


• He has a car. He really likes it. He would tell me it really doesn't need anything except petrol.


• He has all the tech things he could want - camera, iPod, funky retro-styled radio, computers, computer games, state of the art PDA-phone thingie.


• He has had the same watch for nearly two decades. It tells the time and hence fits his criteria of a great watch. He bristles at the idea of replacing it.

Other things he likes: me, great food, vodka, cars, cheese, red wine, history, chess, Jessica Alba, trance music, the stockmarket, laughing, the colour blue, France, architecture, taking care of his parents, science fiction, brunettes, action movies, arguing with me about the correct pronunciation of words, being right about the latter, foreign language films and most frustratingly .... telling me not to spend too much money on his birthday as "anything will do".

I am in need of guidance. I've been chewing over this for weeks and have nothing to show for it. There must be a knack to this buying for blokes thing. It can't be that hard, can it? Your thoughts welcome....