Festive roulette

Christmas shopping can be a chore. You start off by compiling a list of who you need to buy for, pepper it with ideas of what might suit this person or that and supplement those entries with hints dropped and tips gleaned from relatives in the know. The first couple of trips are fun. The Christmas decorations in the shops are inventive and fresh and you’re sure you can get pretty much everyone ticked off your present list in no time. Two or three more trips later, though, and the novelty décor has worn thin, the Christmas muzak has gone into grating overdrive and you despair of finding something suitable for teenage nephew or uncle with no known hobbies or sense of humour.

At the moment, I’m feeling abnormally smug because I started making a few presents ages ago. A couple of these thoughtful ‘makes’ have yet to be realised, but the fact that I know what the recipients of these hand-stitched gifts are going to get fills me with calm.

It’s the ‘argh-not-knowing-what-to-get-and-I-can’t-give-them-aftershave-again’ that drives me and many other people crazy.
Frankly, it’s no wonder shops do a roaring trade in smellies, calendars, novelty socks and boxer shorts.

Conversation at last week’s Brockley Knits Knit Night turned to just this problem – and a potential solution. Rachel told us about a new app that does your shopping for you and randomly selects items to send you based on your budget. The idea seemed to be about regularly getting something other than bills and estate agents notices through the letterbox, but on hearing about it I immediately saw a solution to my ‘what to buy those awkward relatives’ dilemma.

The Amazon Random Shopper is actually set up to give the account holder random surprises at regular intervals. A one-off assortment of oddities doesn’t have quite the same appeal and is no good for repeat business. As with trading cards and other lucky dip prizes, the whole point is having another go and seeing what you get next time in the hope it’s something better than you’ve just unwrapped. In fact, there's already a site - Gift Roulette - that lets you have as many or as few dips as you like in the bucket. Sadly, it ships only within the US.

Nonetheless, I think I may throw caution to the wind and select some utterly random items from Amazon this year based on little more than a product category and price.

Actually, come to think of it, I’m sure I’ve still got a chocolate roulette game in the cupboard that someone gave us last year. I wonder if it’s still in date…