At a party earlier this week (unsalted crisps and lime sodas all round) I was introduced to a new Times tradition. Not the first cuckoo of spring. But the first neologism of the credit crunch. The new coinage in question was a word doing the rounds of fashion circles - recessionista. Apparently a recessionista is a fashionista (natch) who is decisively on trend in these straitened times and dresses exclusively in black (it's grim), vintage (it's all we can afford) and long skirts (going short during bad economic times is as frowned on in hemlines as it is in hedge funds).

Given that most of those who dress exclusively in secondhand black clothing with full-length skirts are either priests or nuns, it's nice to know that the fashion icon of the moment is not Agyness Deyn but Father Ted. However, the advent of recessionista as a word in its own right got me thinking about the other terms and phrases that are now indispensable to an understanding of the credit crunch. My brief guide now follows...

Going short into the weekend (verbal phrase): the feeling you get on Friday night when you punch in a request for £50 to the cash machine and a single tenner emerges with a sign flashing to tell you that there are no more funds to withdraw and the promise to buy your son's birthday present (all £15 of advanced Playmobil) is still ringing in your wife's ears and the car's only got five miles worth of petrol left in it and you've got to get from Hammersmith to Farnham and pick up the weekend's groceries, including the ingredients for all the party bags at the Waitrose in Godalming, and you realise you may have to put your shoes on eBay if you're to avoid the divorce courts.

Libor (noun) pronounced LIE-BORE: used to mean interbank interest rates, now one who talks about such stuff with bogus authority, simultaneously misleading and provoking stupefying narcolepsy, as in - “Giles is the number one libor merchant at the Credit Japonnais First Hexham.”

Basle Two (noun): one who in their inability to manage anything, combined with their incoherent hysteria when challenged, recalls the proprietor of Fawlty Towers - as in “the problem with that merchant bank is that it was just stuffed with Basle Twos”.

Forex (noun): (1) the cry one utters when going short into the weekend - as in “XXXX me!” or (2) the revised credit rating of your bank, after the board publish their half-yearly results as in “we were AAA? - but after looking again at our portfolio of beachfront assets in Haiti and unlisted securities in the Kazakh new technology exchanges we're now looking XXXX”.

Securitisation (verbal noun): to render all that was solid into thin air

Going the The Full Mandy (verbal phrase, originally Belgian): Staking it all on one throw of the dice, the sort of behaviour that the Prime Minister considers very foolish in people charged with looking after public money - as in, there should be an end to reward for excessive risk-taking, “When you get salaries based on short-term deals then you have to look again at what the system is doing.” (Andrew Marr, September 2008)

Bryant (verb, related to old English “Harman”, meaning the same thing): to reward those who show slavish loyalty, in defiance of all logic, in the hope that it will revive market conditions - as in “every customer of Bradford & Bingley is going to be Bryanted: they'll now all be on the board”.

Return of the V-neck

Delighted to see that Peter Mandelson's return to the cabinet coincides with the return of the V-neck sweater to public prominence. Ever since the age of 5 I've always felt underdressed unless I've got a pullover on. And crew/polo necks just won't do - far too Frenchy-Wenchy Rive Gauche Les Deux Magots stylee. We need serious jumpers for serious times.

The classic V-neck (as sported in distinctive cherry red by the Business Secretary) is a wear-anywhere wonder, capable of being teamed with a suit to provide both warmth to the body and softening to the personality, or being worn on its own everywhere that is truly comforting, from the golf course to behind the counter of an antiquarian bookshop.

For those, like me, who are battling middle-age spread, the pullover provides a degree of camouflage and shadowing that means observers don't know where the tummy ends and the woollen folds begin. And the V-neck pully also radiates reassurance. You can't imagine Joseph Stalin, Richard Nixon, Jean-Bédel Bokassa or General Galtieri in an M&S slipover. Which makes you wonder why Mr Mandelson wore one.

In defence of nostalgia

I'm looking forward to The Times Cheltenham Literary Festival where I'm debating nostalgia, this Saturday, with Libby Purves, Ann Widdecombe, Kate Adie, Roy Hattersley and Andrew Marr. At the risk of pre-empting the pessimistic bit of my own speech I just want to ask if our world is the better for the loss of conductors on buses, post offices from villages and bank managers from local branches. If the most precious things in life are relationships why does the modern world make it more difficult to maintain them?

Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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