We are getting nicer, though. This year, the country is crazy about craft. Passementerie classes and knitting teas are “it”, and we will pay through the nose for the authentic and personal. A long afternoon by the fire knocking up personal gifts for your friends is clearly a better antidote to existential angst than splashing out on someone else’s efforts.

Plus, it’s super cheap. The super-rich Martha Stewart worked this out a long time ago. Go to her website, www.marthastewart.com, and you will find instructions for making hand-stitched CD pouches and lavender pillows “just like the ones made for the European aristocracy in the Middle Ages”. It is beyond twee. It is unbearable.

So, rule numero uno of giving home-made presents is: do not stray into the loving-hands-at-home cliché. Tulle is out, as is anything peach-hued, sliced with pinking shears, structured with washing-up- liquid bottles or decorated with poster paints. The key to being an artistic grown-up is originality. If your gift has no monetary value, it needs serious personality.

So try the following:

• A customised photo album, full of brilliant pictures of the recipient with their friends. Add stickers, notes and memories. It’s the ultimate special present.
• Ditto hampers — buy a basket or a smart box, decorate it with baubles and fill it with all the things you know your giftee likes. The genius is that it can be as cheap as chips. Mix eBay buys with pound-shop witticisms and at least three pricier items — posh booze is always a winner, as is cashmere.
• Food — the secret here is containers. Ginger biscuits straight from the Aga are tasty, yes, but what about ginger biscuits tucked inside an original 1950s tin purchased from the market that will be kept for years to come? Or caramelised onion marmalade in a pretty 1970s jam jar that you sometimes find in cardboard boxes under tables at flea markets? Out and about, a dedicated home-made-gift giver is never off duty.

  There comes a point when you have to take the plunge into uncharted craft waters, though. Venture carefully — what’s the point of getting yourself in a tangle? A rule of thumb is: never try anything that requires more than five manoeuvres or ingredients. Another is: maintain the highest fashion standards at all times. So try:
  

• Coarse salt from the corner shop and plenty of lavender oil makes bath salts. Put in a big old jar with a lid.
• Vintage teacups — 50p from a junk shop without their saucers — and a scented candle kit.
• A cheap mirror, the frame painted in Cath Kidston colours and aged with sandpaper. It looks so much more expensive than it actually is.
• Plain cushion covers, some bargain-basement sparkly brooches, and it’s all getting very Lucinda Chambers for The Rug Company.
• A ball of string, some beads — hours of fun!
• Or try this: six eggs in a box with their centres blown out. When the eggshell is empty, post a little scroll of paper inside on which you have typed an ancient Chinese proverb or message. Perfectly heart- melting. So heart-melting, in fact, that Martin Margiela sells them in his shop in Paris for £13 a pop.

  Then there is the flip side: you’re so busy you can barely remember your name. In which case, thank goodness for Harvey Nicks.

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