Shopaholic? Only once a year...

I went shopping in Leeds today. That's a sentence you won't hear from me very often, because the ensuing conversation usually terrifies me to my very core. Every time I've mentioned it to anyone I know, I end up feeling hideously out of my depth and inadequate.

The problem is, I don't like shopping. I really don't. I'm 25, female, reasonably slim and of average height. On paper, I should be a shopaholic. I should be frittering away my pennies in the many boutiques on offer in my delightful home city. At least, that's what I've come to understand is the norm for people of my demographic. Female colleagues at work go gooey over Kurt Geiger shoes and Gucci handbags, quoting designers' names and prices from all kinds of stores I'm sure I've never even walked past.

It's not just the clothes. I regularly avoid shopping for gifts, home furnishings, even food, until the consequences of not shopping (starvation, disinheritance etc) begin to appear a greater threat than the prospect of a half-hour trip into the city centre.

Sometimes, if the mood takes me, I can last for almost two hours on my own, wandering around the shops. More often than not, I head out with the best intentions, only to return an hour later, grumpy, without any purchases and with incredibly static hair from pulling my jumper on and off in the changing rooms.

But here's the strange thing: I absolutely love Christmas shopping. It's the busiest time of the year, when fellow shoppers are more irritable than ever and shops pump their heating up to sauna level in order to entice you in from the street. I ought to detest the very idea of spending time in the city centre in December, but I don't. I actually relish the prospect of spending a few hours wandering from shop to shop, picking up things I know my friends and family will love, while being shoved in all different directions and listening to Bing Crosby on a seemingly eternal loop. Perhaps that makes me a generous person, getting far more enthusiastic about shopping for others than for myself.

Or perhaps it just proves, even more than my lack of interest in fashion, that I'm not normal.