You know what? When the recession really starts, I hope it is made very clear that it has. For the past three years it's been variously “coming”, “round the corner” and, more recently, “starting to bite” - but it all still seems a bit vague for something so supposedly gigantic. Are we experiencing it or not? Was the Lehman thing the start? If so, can we make it official? Honestly, this economic downturn is coyer about coming out than Lindsay Lohan. What we really need is an edition of the 10pm BBC News to open with the words: “The credit crunch officially started at 1.17pm today. This is it. It's ‘Oh S*** Friday'. All your savings were set on fire half an hour ago. Britain is now worth 19p. A message from Downing Street said: ‘Start eating squirrels. Love, Gordon Brown'.”

Of course, the truth of the matter is that, more often than not, we do not know when an event or epoch has begun. We must accept that the events of Man are rendered neither as thunderclaps nor inviolable calendar entries. Instead they are more like a mist from which you can hear the odd voice saying: “Oh wow - the Industrial Revolution! How long has that been going on? I always miss the start of these things.”

One aspect of the crunch has definitely begun, however: the middle classes getting quite excited about it. Now, I don't like bashing the middle classes. I've spent nearly 15 years getting into off-white emulsions and learning to refer to camping holidays as “jolly” so that I might walk among these clean, cheerful, wine-appreciating folk. If you're going to be in a class, you might as well go for the one that is within a handy commuting distance from both the working and upper classes and which has, as Mark from Peep Show boasts, “pension provision coming out of its arse”. The middle class is the most comfortable and convenient social stratum. I'm totally pro.

But be that as it may, within the middle classes is a faction that is responding to the impending Cashpocalypse with what seems suspiciously like eagerness. Joy, even. They've practically got recession advent calendars, counting down to the day where the first Pret A Manger goes bust. Over the past year a series of Guardian and Observer supplements and “specials” have sketched out a vision of just how fulfilling a global depression could be for their readers. According to their features departments, a decade of economic stagnation, energy crises and social turmoil is going to pass in an enjoyable homely whirl of home-made fruitcakes, Victorian parlour games and a covetable back-garden turnip patch. The Guardian has shown us how to make corsages out of ribbon-scraps and a front-door mat out of wooden pegs;just last weekend The Observer ran a feature on collecting free, wild foods that made reference to a recipe for “acacia-flower beignets”.

Obviously, I want in on all this; it sounds brilliant. Especially if you've bought a new wardrobe to go with it - maybe spurning all your Primark gear for a couple of £200 “post credit-crunch investment pieces” from Whistles.

Upsettingly, however, I can't quite see how I'm going to fit having a sexy recession into my to-do list. After all, when we're all having to walk six miles to an emergency electricity spigot, fill a bucket, then walk six miles back - just to power the telly for Strictly Come Dancing - it's hard to see how we can fit in making all these “comforting” pikelets and “cheery” felt hot-water bottle covers in the shape of ponies. Don't get me wrong. I know where the middle classes are coming from on this one. After all, when the entire Western world looks like it's about to go down the economic U-bend, it's comforting to believe that you can blithely style your way out of it while consuming a great deal more cake. Who would not like to think that the best way to prepare for the “worst economic conditions in 60 years” is to remodel the house in a knowingly “folksy” manner? If there's any way I can shield my family from the vicissitudes of international stock-market turbulence simply by making a lovely sprigged apron in the manner of Cath Kidston, I'm all over it.

However, and sadly, it is all ultimately a bit like Marie Antoinette building a rustic hamlet in the gardens of Versailles and dressing up as a milkmaid. I have considerable hands-on experience of being very poor and, during those years, one thing was very noticeable: absolutely no one was wandering into fields in £200 Whistles dresses, gathering acacia flowers and turning them into beignets. My experience leads me to believe that the best response to learning that we are all imminently destitute really isn't “Hurrah! That'll make Britain more cosy”; it is: “Right. I'm going to marry a Russian oligarch, rent out the kids and sell the cats to an Albanian furrier.”

The most amusing part of all this is the secret belief that underpins the whole thing: that, since the Sixties, the working classes have been kind of failing at being poor - notable lack of bubble-and-squeak, doorstep scrubbing, making-do-and-mending, considering a bottle of brown ale a treat, etc - and that it's down to the middle classes to teach them, all over again, how to do poverty properly. As if this country could use the recession to reintroduce a Heritage Range of ruddy-cheeked mums - knitting cardigans and boiling up sheets in a copper - if we publish enough Guardian “how to” guides. Like when we brought the beavers back in Scotland!

Ultimately, however, I suspect that the reason we haven't spent the past 40 years darning socks, making oatcakes and entertaining the children with shadow-puppet theatres is because it's a bit of a pain in the arse compared with going to the shops and then slapping on a DVD of The Incredibles. After all, one of the most notable aspects of humanity is that we do tend to carry on doing stuff we enjoy. We rarely accidentally “forget to be poor” for 40 years if it really is turning us on. If I do end up making trifles out of swedes and weaving cling-film on a loom, I'm doing it with the correct attitude: festering resentment that the Americans buggered everything up.

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