So now we have it. Britain is in recession. How is life going to change? Despite the hardship and worry for many of us, there are unexpected benefits.

Take taxi rides. The past 10 years have seen them become increasingly fraught. The plethora of Smartie-coloured control buttons, video screens and soothing voices leaves me screaming. When I ask tentatively whether the football commentary could be turned down, drivers snarl, “Don’t you be telling me what to do in my cab,” and eject me into the rain.

Last week when the driver, after getting paid, got out of the cab and approached my door, I feared the worst. Was my tip too modest? Had he taken offence? He opened the door. I shrank back. He looked puzzled. Suddenly I understood. He was not about to hit me. He was, in fact, performing an action I had not seen for a decade. He was holding the door open for me.

Dinner party conversations, too, are much improved. Gone are house prices, holidays and school fees. Now it is all about guns. The collapse of their world has turned many young hedge fund managers and bankers into armageddon fantasists. If they are going down, then so is everyone else.

One power surge too many this winter, a number have explained to me, will see our ancient power grid collapse and civil society with it. They urge me, a single mother alone in the world but for a teenage son and a fluffy dog, to get a gun for our protection.

They may have lost their wealth, but these young men still retain their attitude to gadgets. One advocated the “street sweeper”. A short bulky gun with a rotating magazine, it is, I am assured, the Prada of home defence – easy to use in the hall or on a staircase. An extra bonus is that the bullets do not go through walls. “You can get it on the internet,” a banker assured me, displaying the same disregard for our gun laws as he had for financial regulations. “Customs won’t notice.”

As others have discovered to their cost, the banker’s information is not entirely reliable. Not many households in the world can boast an item labelled a “destructive device” in the United States and a “prohibited weapon” in Canada.

An older hedge fund manager proved more helpful. We were dining at high table in an Oxbridge college when he whipped out his BlackBerry. Street sweepers, we discovered, are legal in Russia. In Moscow you can even get them gold-plated.

For the UK householder this recession offers more tangible benefits than the street sweeper. The service industry, for example, has come down to earth. Last week Lord Desai warned that the coming recession will hit university-educated white-collar workers in the south and east.

Nothing sums up the fate of the services dependent on this sector better than the Polish builder. Originally cheap and dependable, he, like everything else in the economy, has overheated.

A week before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a Polish builder and I contemplated the cracked paintwork on the back of my house. Juggling three different mobile phones, he said: “I have workers on seven sites in the area.” He advised restoration work, “like they do in museums”, using a filler unique to Poland. “Much cheaper and better than you get here. I will drive it over for you. I do everything professional.”

For this he quoted a sum large enough to buy a small house in Greece, Italy or even Poland itself. Then came the recession. The high zloty and strong Polish economy mean that my builder can no longer import Polish builders. He is even thinking of returning to Poland himself.

In desperation I sought out an English builder. I have not used an English builder for 20 years. His quote was one third of the Pole’s – even with Vat. Astonished, I questioned him on his materials and method. The English builder looked puzzled. He scratched his head. “We rub down,” he volunteered, “and then we rub down some more.”

It is not just the middle classes who must change their expectations. I have spent the past few weeks travelling around the country interviewing people for a pamphlet I am writing. Everyone suddenly has an opinion on the economy.

In Newcastle upon Tyne two young men just out of prison grimaced. They were used to hard times, they said, because “our estate has never been out of a recession. The only time we see government money here is when there’s a riot”.

The most scathing comments came from wheeler-dealers themselves. On a train to Essex I sat opposite a bald, thickset man. He was evasive about his work but compared himself to the bankers and hedge fund managers in his enjoyment of a good deal.

He got the same thrill from seeing an opportunity and exploiting it. The only difference, apart from the size of the reward, which he did not begrudge them, was the level of risk: “Every time I do a deal I am on the line. These guys think they have balls. They’re not tough. I am tough.” When they fail, “they start crying”. And what happens? “We all have to run and kiss it better.” When he failed it was much simpler: “I get beaten up.”

The wheeler-dealers of Brixton are also having their problems. One man described to me how he had bought into the middle-class dream. He had got a job, a mortgage and a car on hire purchase. Now he had lost his job. “I am worse off than if I had stayed on benefits,” he complained. The last to be dragged up by a booming economy, he was the first out when it faltered. To keep up payments he is exchanging his designer shoes for trainers, going back to his old street name and “doing my ting”.

Here the recession has also hit. His customers – white, middle-class professionals – are cutting back or getting the chemical equivalents legally off the internet. “I am all mashed up,” he admitted.

Had this man who had lost so much also joined the armageddon club? Mention of the street sweeper scandalised him: “You with a gun! You can’t go around shooting people.” Then he saw the opportunity. Maybe someone he knew might know someone else whose cousin’s little brother might be able to get a Glock instead.

What’s the recession price, I asked. And will it damage my wallpaper?

Minette Marrin is away

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