Men – don’t go last-minute Christmas shopping before you’ve read this…

Still not bought all your gifts? With time fast running out and crowds in a frenzy, there's only one place to go, says Paul Clements – and it's not Amazon or the high street

Hurry, hurry: Christmas shoppers on London’s Regent Street (PA) (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

What do you do when you realise your future husband is buying you a heated clothes dryer for Christmas? What’s the etiquette?

I’m not asking for a friend. I’m asking for me. Is it ungrateful to insist that, maybe, he doesn’t do that? Is it gauche to suggest that he buy something – anything – else? Is it too late to call off the wedding?

I only realised what he was planning to buy because he left the Lakeland catalogue open at the “clothes-drying solutions” page, and my jokey “You’re not getting me one of those for Christmas, are you…?” was met with a wounded look.

Of course, his gift is safely wrapped and hidden inside the wardrobe, where it has gone unnoticed for weeks. Mine was going to be click-and-collected this Saturday – “Christmas Eve eve”, the day no right-thinking person goes near a shopping centre. Everyone knows that’s the day you do one last supermarket sweep, hoovering up all of the yellow-stickered festive goodies. (Mince pies, 10p!)

But apparently I’ve ruined everything by “guessing” my present. Exactly what I will unwrap is now at the mercy of the cosmic chaos of Oxford Street shopping in whatever opening hours remain between now and the big day.

Menfolk are easily overwhelmed by the whole gift-giving thing at this time of year. I am inevitably reminded of the late, great Victoria Wood, who said of men who go shopping: “You see them all on Christmas Eve, panicking, running in and out of department stores, blundering about like moths trying to find the lingerie department. Trying to buy French knickers for their wives without actually looking at them, touching them or saying the word ‘knickers’.”

The promise of overheated, over-crowded shops is enough to trigger a fight-or-flight response at the best of times. And those trusty present-giving adages – William Morris’s exhortation to buy nothing “that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”, or that you “buy something they wouldn’t buy themselves” (literally every Mumsnet discussion about picking an appropriate gift for the cleaner) – don’t apply at Christmas.

In fact, taken together, they only serve to short-circuit the synapses. I like to think it’s why, on Christmas Day, millions of spouses get to unwrap overly practical gifts they’d certainly never think of buying for themselves. But, darling, I thought you liked power tools?

When it comes to the last-minute present dash, the trick is not to panic, avoid comedy presents (anything “funny” – socks, mugs, slippers – won’t be by Boxing Day), and plan your assault.

You could make do with a membership or subscription to something – a local museum, the National Trust, Soho House, Spotify, The Rest is Politics podcast… – but it’s hard to wrap the printout of a confirmation email convincingly, and without a whiff of sadness.

My tip, then, is avoid the high street and the internet altogether, and head straight for the local garden centre. It’s the one place at Christmas that’s guaranteed to not be heaving, save for hassled dads buying replacement Nordic firs after their first tree dropped all its needles.

A heritage variety of plum or raspberry, or a hybrid tayberry – or even a potted fig – would be a gift that keeps on giving once it takes on leaves in the warmer months. And they’d never guess what it is when elegantly and elaborately wrapped.

For those without outdoor space, there are houseplants galore – and the recent fever for calathea, the prayer plant, with its dramatic and geometric foliage, means they are reassuringly expensive. Ferns, with their unfurling fronds, are just as magnificent and also surprisingly costly. Likewise, premium terracotta pots: gardeners can never have enough of them, but will smart at paying £200 for something sandblasted and Grecian from the RHS. Which makes them a proper treat in the Morris tradition – one that you could fill with stocking fillers prior to wrapping. Christmas is saved.

As for my pressie, I’ve taken the path of least resistance and sent my OH an Amazon link to something practical that I wouldn’t buy for myself and which, with a bit of luck, might arrive in time. Noise-cancelling earphones, since you ask.

But now I think of it, I’d quite like that heated clothes dryer after all. And surely it’s the thought that counts?