The stock-market was plunging, the red lights and arrows flashing, the news readers were doing their best solemn frowns and the newspaper headlines screamed "World Wide Recession!" and "Depression Age Predicted!" and all I could think was 'Cool! That's cheered me up! People will start to knit again!' and 'Does this mean I have to pluck my eyebrows like Marlene Dietrich?'

Doom and gloom, doom and gloom. Yes, dear readers, I realize there is plenty of that. And I would love to personally punch in the face the vulture guy I saw on the telly who was profiting from the auctioning of foreclosed houses in America. It will happen here of course, already is I suspect.

Extreme knitters will never get their knickers in a knot over an economic crisis.

But today I don't want to get angry. I don't want to think about injustice. I don't want to realize the seeming powerlessness of my averageness.

That's why I think it'll be good if people have to start doing things like growing their own veges again - the same as in the olden days.

It's a SpongeBob mindset: let's name all the really great things about having a new depression! Yay!

But don't start with a jingle because nothing much that's good rhymes, e.g., "Hey! We're in a Depression, we've lost our possessions, not that it's an obsession - but I'd rather have a recession .." (Yeah yeah, I challenge Michael Bolton to do any better ..)

Perhaps it will be a kind of blessing in disguise, though, for the Western World and cure our obesity problem? Stuff national politics and elections - let's just make Jamie Oliver supreme potentate of the world! He'll show us the way after we've freed all the battery hens and bartered for his cook books! I can see the U.S. doing OK with this: gun in hand, beaver cap on head and moose a la Palin sizzling away on the ol' George Foreman. And Australia, well - we're naturals aren't we? Just give us a stick and we'll go and dig up a nice juicy witchetty grub, toss it in a bit of Jamie's gremolata - Bob's your uncle. But I am a bit worried about the U.K: the Poms. They are not used to anything that is not pastel coloured on their dinner plates. I would like to see them nibbling at the hedgerows one day but .. alas! Their white bread and sugar sandwiches will take ages to run out.

But yeah! It'll be great! We can swap sewing patterns and hand-me-down clothes! We can shove plastic bags in our shoes to stop the water coming in the holes! We can ride bikes and walk with our legs! We can get donkeys! ! We can turn our junk into furniture, or presents, or skilfully crafted interpretive art objects! We can re-visit all our old obsolete technology that is clogging up the shed! Who cares if Super Mario is black and white and on a 1990 Gameboy!?! We can bake apples, we can have sing-alongs..

IT'S GONNA BE LIKE GILLIGAN'S ISLAND MEETS THE WOMBLES OF WIMBLEDON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Coupons! Crowded houses! Threadbare furniture! Funny hats! Rickety cars! We'll make our own chicken stock, eat around the bruise on the banana and have the maggot-free half of the apricot; old bread is still good bread and there are a million ways to revive a manky vegetable. I can see it now, dear readers, I can see it now! Open your eyes to the vision! Let me point out the rainbow!

WE'RE GONNA LIVE LIKE PAUPERS !!!!!!!

Uh oh.

... --- ...

I'm stuffed.

I already do.

.