Notes to self: I'm present tense

I hate shopping. Controversial, I know. I hate shopping for food, I hate shopping in the sales, I hate shopping for jeans and I hate shopping malls.

Anything that is vaguely associated with shopping trips, I also hate. Changing room lighting, crowded coffee shops, queues, overpriced clothing etc.

Any time I confess this to somebody they react with the same sequence of disbelief, confusion and finally disgust that they do when I tell them I think Twilight is rubbish (sorry, but I do).

So, although I hate to sound like Scrooge, during this season I feel a sense of foreboding about the impending epic shopping trips I will have to embark on.

And we all know that December weekends are the very worst times for shopping.

Even pro-shoppers might wince at the prospect of sniffing their way through 30 perfumes in Debenhams telling 23 shop assistants that no, they don't need to help you — you are quite capable of smelling perfumes by yourself, before finding a fragrance that their mum may or may not like and then having to queue for 20 minutes to pay for it. All for a gift mother dearest will probably never use.

I love every other part of the festive season. Noddy Holder blaring from every shop for two months? Excellent! Wearing head-to-toe sequins to work? Why not! Eating mince pies for breakfast? Don't mind if I do! But you can keep the shopping.

It's not the money. I adore spending money — just ask my friends who have to bail me out of a financial hole at the end of every single month.

And it's not the fact I don't like giving. I love to see the look on somebody's face when you give them the perfect gift.

I think it's the pressure of remembering to buy something for everyone, having tight time restraints (even if they are due to a lack of organisation) and worrying about buying the right gift. Not to mention the claustrophobia that Christmas mania causes on December weekends.

I leave my shopping to the last minute every time. Around this time every year, I will be staring into my mug of spiced chai dreamily singing Deck the Halls when somebody will cheerily mention that there are only four more shopping days until Christmas.

This will knock me out of my blissful festive daze and into an adrenalin-fuelled frenzy of Body Shop gift set buying, panicking over a lack of Sellotape in my flat and trying desperately to remember just one thing that my sister mentioned that she liked during the past year.

If you are the type of person who smugly posts Facebook updates at the beginning of December that they have finished all their shopping, realise that this does nothing to quell my panic; in fact it may even get you booted off my friends list.

Nobody likes a boaster, so if you're sat by the fire (does anyone have a fireplace in Dubai?) listening to Bing Crosby and eating toasted chestnuts while I am trying to track down a pair of nutcrackers in Spinney's, please keep this kind of information to yourself, or you might find that Santa only gets you a lump of coal for Christmas...