My first foray into presents from Wales was embarrassingly enjoyable. I picked out a few nice pieces of jewellery for a female friend’s birthday and she simply adored them. The fact that they had personal significance made them even more special. The design was a flower from her homeland, and it was set with some stones that matched her eyes perfectly. The jewellery was small and packaged snugly in some little cases so when she travelled back to her university (in Aberystwyth) it fit in her luggage perfectly.

I went a little mad on cufflinks, buying my male relatives and my boyfriend a shirt and cufflinks for every conceivable occasion (Christmas, birthdays, Fathers’ Day and even Easter). Followed up with the odd tie and pair of socks, my men were the best dressed in town. The trouble with that was we had to co-ordinate who was wearing what to which event. Once, several family members wore the same shirt to a birthday dinner and none of us have lived it down. The art of remembrance of embarrassing incidents is one my family holds proud.

After the rush of engagements and weddings, for which I was fond of personalised glassware and mugs, came the inevitable baby boom. Soft toys were showered upon babes everywhere, and no newborn’s nursery was left unadorned. Fleece blankets were also draped across prams, and I had the idea to embroider the names of the babies along with their birthdates in a corner. The new mums loved them!

I became a gift buying expert, and people began liaising with me to find out what to buy for upcoming occasions. I started to keep lists, and then my friend (from the university in Aber) put me onto a website where I could find all the presents I needed for every family event. Everything from novelty to serious gifts was on the website, and I began to organise who would buy what. T-shirts for boyfriends’ birthdays, tankards for twenty-firsts, mugs for mums and dolls for daughters. Christmas was now a time of year I looked forward to, and I got right into the whole present thing.

And of course, everyone I knew gradually got a dragon as a gift – somewhere along the line, people received a little reminder that I was Welsh.