"Hang on." I said. "You've never offered me one all the time I've been paying a salary to this bank and now that I'll be a leech on society, you do this!"

"Yes, but you will be a graduate, earning a high salary," he replied.
Couple of things – it would be three years before I became a graduate, and, I'm a reporter.

So I followed the lead of my Government and spent, spent, spent. It seemed that there was no relationship between what was coming in at the bottom and what was going out at the top, and Florida is just so lovely this time of year.

My boom years were brought crashing down when three unfriendly men from the Midlands knocked on the door and said it was payback time or my possessions would be removed.

At the time I think I had a bike, the clothes I was wearing and a small tin of baked beans – you know those little half cans that single people buy. A quick call to the "Bank of Mum" and, with a flash of her pen, she saved me with a well-timed cheque (I'm still planning to pay you back, Mum – honest).

Okay, I may not be entirely to blame for the recession, perhaps just a symptom, but with the Government plummeting to a trillion pound debt I have a couple of questions: a) I would like to know who we owe this money to, and b) will a gang of heavies from Birmingham be knocking on Mr Brown's door threatening to take his bike unless he pays up?

I was discussing the recession with a good friend of mine in the US – a teacher at one of America's most prestigious schools. Despite producing some of the brightest and most talented students on the East Coast, he felt a terrible sense of disappointment.

He said: "We hoped these great minds would have been put to work by multi-billion pound corporations to develop new energy systems, a sustainable economic apparatus or clean running engines, but they all seemed to end up in banks running hedge funds and finding ways to make money out of money that never existed in the first place."

Can anyone explain to me how hedge funds lasted as long as they did, and more to the point, what is one? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

They tell us it's going to be a terrible year and things will get worse before the seeds of recovery appear at the end of the year. But don't forget they are the same people who had no idea this current crisis was coming – so ignore them and do as much free stuff as you can. Even the bankers and politicians can't stop you going for a walk or making love.
Happy New Year.