But with a new-born baby the person receiving the gift is not the only one involved. You may bring them delight — I certainly hope so — but they’re certainly not going to feel gratitude. But the parents will.

If your gift is something which really does delight the baby and, more to the point, is capable of granting the parents a few moments of peace.

So put aside your thoughts of a present which will stand out when they tear the wrapping paper off and go instead for one which will make the parents will thank you (perhaps only inwardly) again and again in the months to come.

The christening baby gifts blog points you in the direction of the quick and easy way to find the the gift that buys silence. I wish I’d thought of it before now!

But if you’re very fond of the parents as well as the baby, perhaps this is just the thing. And I’m sure that the baby would certainly appreciate the softness of the cashmere without troubling too much about the cost implications!

The article by Melinda Ashton Turner is headed ‘Blow the Budget’ after all, and explains: “Studio Roam’s personalised baby blankets are made from the finest cashmere, making them supersoft and easy to drape. The company has an extensive collection of beautiful pieces, and will work with you to personalise existing designs or create new ones. This Baby Birds and Banners design comes in four colours.”

What’s more, clicking round on the site, I discovered that they also do a UK Shipping Forecast Blanket with all those comforting (if you’re tucked up beneath said blanket listening to Radio Four) maritime names knitted into it. “Viking, North Utshire, South Utshire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth…” Aaaah: I’m starting to feel sleepy already. Cue “Sailing By” and fade to black.

Having said that, if you’re really patient you could plant seeds or bulbs in a pattern so that one day the object of your affections will be greeted with “I Love You, Lisa” or whatever spelt out in daffodils at the roadside as she travels to work.

That takes a very long time. You can certainly score brownie points for devotion. But the delay also risks severe embarrassment if things have, shall we say, “changed” since you went to work with your trowel.

Chocolates seem much quicker and more reliable. And, it turns out, you can spell out your message in chocolates courtesy of the Thornton’s web site.

They’ve got a system which allows you to send a message in chocolate by choosing individual letters from a chocolate alphabet. You can also do smiling faces, frowning faces and, of course, hearts.

This seems a really handy system to me. There are so many different things you could do with it. Opening a box of chocolates and reading a message there is a very surprising thing at the moment. A very powerful way of saying “sorry” or, at the other extreme, a very memorable business gift.

I’ve only used these for personal presents so far, and I can assure you that the reaction was pure delight.
They come in two sizes, containing 22 or 33 letters and I really, really recommend taking a look. It takes a while for the full alphabet to appear on your screen, but it’s well worth the wait.

Another good thing about this site is that they do gift-wrapping, you can also include a hand-written card and you can have your gifts delivered to different addresses. So you could set up the addresses of a load of friends and then take care of Christmas in one order. That’s one way of avoiding the crowds and giving some unique gifts.

The thing which struck me for the first time, just as I was about to scan the book for this post, was that the first certificate was bought on the day after I was born. It was bought in Bromley, which makes it seem most likely that it was bought by my grandparents who lived near there.

I don’t think I’d even realised who had given me the original present. Obviously, I would not have been personally conscious of this gift until several years later, by which time somebody had added to the pot with a few more certificates. Perhaps the same grandparents had continued the tradition for a while? Investing in my future…

But I certainly do remember the book containing the certificates from my childhood. The baby may not have appreciated it, but the child certainly did! I can distinctly remember the eternity which was represented by the wording on the certificate stating that the 15 shillings would have grown to be a whole pound (and thruppence in the days when that I was a wonderful coin?) eventually — if I could wait a whole ten years. A pound seemed a lot of money. But ten years was an even bigger concept and almost impossible to grasp.

That was back in 1955. Ten years came and went. The older child and the teenager never cashed in the certificates. I wonder whether that was because a pound did not seem worth having, even then (under half a vinyl LP, I think). Or was it because, as now, these things already seemed more like talismans from the past and more valuable as mementoes of wishes for the future given with love?

I look at these certificates half a century later and remember now the people who gave them and the child who was fascinated by them. From being simple money they have become a very personal minor treasure.

At least the company underneath, with a name like Stork Gifts, seems to hold out the promise of something more appropriate. The trouble is that all those gifts turn out to be pretty much the usual stuff. Cuddly toys and things like that. I’m looking for something more personal, more individual than that.

But not something too expensive or bringing with it too much responsibility. I know of someone who received a small wood (as in ‘collection of trees’) as a present. That seems a wonderful idea to me. Such a gift should certainly last! And it also provided something to be enjoyed and explored together over the years. But that’s quite a responsibility to lumber (sorry) someone with.

So what’s next on the list? Next was a site selling funky socks on the day that I looked. That’s certainly not going to do it. Unless they are remarkably special socks. Socks are not something to be considered as gifts until the recipient is in middle age, if then.

Moving on down the Google page I find jumper sets, quilts and a ‘baby bouquet’. That last one seems unusual enough. I can’t quite imagine a baby appreciating a bouquet. But it turns out to be a collection of essential babywear folded up in such a way that it looks like a bouquet made out of terrycloth or something. OK: I’ll grant you that the presentation is unusual, but the presents themselves are hardly the answer to the unusual baby gift quest.

I’m clearly going to have to come at this another way! Or maybe I should try the Porsche garage after all?

My mother died a while ago and this is one of the many treasures we found while clearing her house.
I had it in mind that this contained a letter from my Grandfather, written to me at a time when I could read. But I was wrong. Inside was a card from my Godfather at the time of my Christening in October 1955. Curiously appropriate to my present search…

In this case the gift may not have lasted a lifetime, but the card which came with it has.
Now I need to find the letter from my Grandfather which, if I’ve got it right this time, does refer to the actual gift.

Fifty years later these things are still around, setting of all manner of echoes and resonances.

Making me wonder, for example, who did give me the engraved silver napkin ring which certainly is with me still and is a gift which has lasted a lifetime. So far!

So where to start? If it’s a boy do you get a train-set with Dad in mind, or should that be an Xbox? Hardly. But Christening mugs and silver napkins don’t really fit the bill these days either.

Trying to think of the child, not the parents, wouldn’t it be great to find something which lived on in memory for their entire life? Or lived on as part of their real life — I’m thinking of Grayson Perry’s Teddy Bear, Alan Measles here. As this article on Grayson Perry from the Daily Telegraph explains Alan Measles has been there right from the start:

“What would you never throw away? My teddy bear Alan Measles, which I was given for my first Christmas. He was always hugely emotionally important to me, and ruled over the imaginary land that I made up. It’s amazing that he came through all the turbulence of my teenage years and beyond. He must have gone through all those flats and squats and somehow managed to stay intact, still in the jumpsuit that my Auntie Mary knitted for him. I made his throne in 2000 when I recognised his majesty. I’m making quite a lot of work about him at the moment: I’ve made a shrine to him and now I’m making a statue.”

I think I’m getting carried away here. Trying to ensure immortality by proxy through someone else’s childhood memories… No, I need to find something else. But when wandering into the mysterious world of shopping for presents for children as yet unknown, where do I start? Where do I go to look for something truly original? Where do I find unusual baby gifts? Online?