THERE was no trudging round the shops looking for Christmas presents for Lynn Green this year.

In the space of a couple of hours, it was done ... and she didn't even move from her office desk!

Lynn is a production co-ordinator in the Internet department with Newsquest, based at the GUARDIAN, in Bridge Street and part of her job in recent months has been helping to create the Cheshire Mall of Shoppers' World.

This is a shopping mall on the Internet with more than 30 shops, all offering Internet ordering. Having worked on the Mall, Lynn knew exactly what products were on offer, and how much she wanted to spend.

She wrote out her shopping list of presents.

Lynn decided that she wanted a doll's house for her daughter, Lauren, jewellery for her mum, wine for her dad, adventure toys for Lauren and her other daughter, Samantha, Christmas cards for herself and relaxation tapes for her work colleagues!

First, Lynn visited the on-line shop of Pine and Lace of Hyde and checked out the list of dolls' houses available. She chose one costing £180 and placed her order, using her credit card.

Next stop - on screen of course - was Dolan's Jewellers of Widnes where Lynn viewed gold chains and selected a 30 cm chain in nine carat gold costing £60.

On to The Ninja Corporation of Widnes where she bought inflatable adventure play toys for her daughters costing £108. For that, she got a pop up mansion, a pop up play tent and a pop up tunnel.

For her father's present, she visited Portland Wine Company of Altrincham. After calling up wines on screen, she spotted a Chateau Cardonne special, at £8 99p and ordered half a dozen bottles.

Next it was on to Snap Cards, of Warrington where Lynn bought humorous Christmas cards costing £10-50p.

Last stop was Timeline Recordings, Warrington, where Lynn bought relaxation and stress management tapes costing £10.

Within four days, all the gifts had arrived at Lynn's home. All she had to do was wrap them.

Her Christmas shopping was finished.

Said Lynn : "It's so easy. It has saved so much time. It is unbelievable that all that shopping could be done in such a short time. Only three per cent of shoppers are doing their Christmas shopping on the Internet this year, but the figure is set to rise dramatically in the future. Only £5m was spent on-line during l997, but it will top £165m this year.

"This doesn't surprise me. Once people have shopped in this way, they will think twice about driving, parking, joining queues and exhausting themselves to do their Christmas shopping.

"I don't think Net shopping is any less fun than being in the shop. In fact, it's a lot more fun. You can see a huge number of items in a fraction of the time it takes to go to the shops, and if you don't like what you order, you can send the stuff back."

Happily, Lynn has liked everything she has bought for Christmas.

Now, like every other Christmas shopper, she's just keeping her fingers crossed that her family and friends will like the presents too.

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