I've had a dreadful year. Well, haven't we all? In the interests of avoiding a tedious paragraph in which I demonstrate how my life is so much worse than yours, let's just cut to the chase and say that because of said dreadful year, we decided to take a holiday. The conversation went something like this ... (Him): "We need a holiday." (Me): "I know, but can we afford it?" (Him): "No." (Me): "Never mind, let's book it. We could get run over by a bus tomorrow."

In common with many of our friends, we've been using this phrase a lot recently. As in: "I wasn't going to buy this coat/iPhone/£5 gourmet sandwich, but then I thought, 'I could get run over by a bus tomorrow'." It really has come to this: using the prospect of impending death as justification for any expenditure.

It being half term this week, I wonder how many other people have used the bus argument as a reason for going on holiday. Because the truth is that, however much we might all be strung out by our dwindling bank balances and precarious jobs, we don't really "need" a holiday: we "want" one. Accustomed to indulging our infinite wants, I fear we may be a long way into this recession before we reset our compasses to distinguish the difference between those and our needs. People "need" food and drink, not seven days in the Seychelles.

Or, in our case, Suffolk. I would like to say we left our woes behind us, but it wouldn't quite be true. Make no mistake: when you holiday in a credit crunch, you don't so much travel light as take your fiscal baggage with you.

Should we stay in the little cottage, or the big one with a power shower and a garden? Should we stop at a service station, or save a tenner and carry on driving? Once installed in the service station, should we complain about paying £8.75 for two cups of battery acid, or content ourselves with moaning about it for the rest of the journey?

Never mind, we reasoned, at least the soothing crash of the waves on Aldeburgh beach would make our worries lap away like shingle. "Let's buy some fresh fish from that little shack over there," I cooed, like a million other Londoners before me. But old Captain Birds Eye had seen us coming. "£12.50 for two bits of seabass!" I screeched, once we were safely out of earshot. "That's more than bloody Waitrose!" And so it went on.

There was one golden evening when I forgot about the cost of everything and actually enjoyed myself. And I can confidently assert that the secret to living in the moment instead of silently evaluating its cost is simple: you get drunk. For anyone contemplating a holiday between now and 2011, I would urge you to try it. "I really fancy the lobster, but it's £25," said my sober husband. "Have it," I slurred. "You could get run over by a bus tomorrow."

However hard a celebrity might try to control her image, somewhere, hidden in the shrubbery, the long lens of the paparazzo always lurks. In our celeb-obsessed world, even a D-lister coming out of Starbucks has currency and is sure to end up printed somewhere. This explains the current proliferation of photographs featuring celebrities without make-up. Even Keira Knightley without a scrap of slap and an acute case of bedhead is still of interest to women obsessed with the minutiae of her seemingly perfect life.

As Heat magazine knows only too well, we're just as happy seeing the stars looking crap ("Look! Lindsay Lohan has a pimple just like mine!") as we are seeing them polished to perfection on the red carpet. Happier, in fact, as it makes them less like deities and more like us.

Madonna knows this only too well. Don't think for a moment that her make-up-free face is an accident: this is not a woman who forgets to apply her mascara. She knows the paparazzi document her every move: her current lack of war paint is simply Madonna doing "victim" mode. Intent on making Guy Ritchie the baddie in their relationship, she wants the public's sympathy and what better way to garner it than by ditching the eyeliner?

For a celebrity, a make-up-free face is visual shorthand for expressing vulnerability. And, according to current wisdom, it is also far more likely to connect with your fanbase than a face plastered with Max Factor. When Nicole Kidman missed out on an Oscar in Cold Mountain, it was alleged that it was because the Academy thought she looked too "perfect" (ie "caked in made-up") in the film.

Since then, actresses have been falling over themselves to go au naturel on celluloid, as though the very act of getting out the Wet Wipes should be enough to warrant a little gold statue. Most recently, Kristin Scott Thomas appears in I've Loved You So Long without make-up, a move which some commentators have hailed as "brave" and "honest". But then it's easy to be brave and honest when you are a freakishly beautiful woman of 48 with Greta Garbo cheekbones.

For those of us whose morning face looks like death warmed up, cooled down and heated up in the microwave again, help is always at hand in an arsenal of well-chosen cosmetics. "No make-up make-up" has long been the default setting for every London girl who doesn't want to look as if she has tried too hard. Three excellent brands to try are Laura Mercier, Bobbi Brown and Chantecaille, all of which excel at ultra-light foundations, lip-coloured lipsticks and eyelid-coloured eyeshadows. Madonna is slathering hers on as we speak.

Having spent the past month watching wildly expensive clothes parade down the catwalks of New York, Milan and Paris, I have been far more out of touch with the world's fiscal woes than I would normally be (don't laugh). But the gist of it all seems to be this. Apparently, some really, really rich people are slightly less rich than before. One of them has even had to swap his domestic staff for less expensive ones. It must be tough, not having your pants folded the way you like them.

Over in the Craik household, things are slightly less dramatic. We fold our own pants, clean our own sinks and cook our own food. Ours is not a tale of billions lost on the stock market, nor is it one of harrowing poverty. Like millions of other Londoners, we're just muddling along in the middle. Our financial woes aren't the stuff of screaming headlines, and if we shared them with a pensioner living in Eastbourne, or a single mother living in Bathgate, they would probably punch us in the face. Downgrading the Chablis to Chardonnay is hardly a tragedy (not that we drink either. We drink beer).

Like most couples, my husband and I each think that we are far more economical than the other. The truth is, we are both pretty sorry advertisements for the New Austerity.

Sometimes, just for my own amusement (in a credit crunch, you have to get your kicks where you can), I do a silent evaluation, while stirring the gruel of an evening, of all our fiscal faux pas.

Admittedly, when it comes to using up all the old food in the fridge, Shed Boy is peerless (yesterday, he cooked and ate a bag of spinach so malodorous that Macbeth's witches would have rejected it for their brew). But give him a light to leave on and he is a happy man.

He also has a fondness for machine-washing single items, an electrical extravagance only matched by my fondness for tumble-drying them. Other areas in which I also fall short: drinking bottled water, shopping on Ocado, using Stella McCartney skincare, having Addison Lee on speed dial and buying an inordinate amount of tights for my daughter for reasons that could probably only be unravelled by a psychologist.

Though it shames me to admit it, our prevailing attitude to money is not one of probity, not even profligacy, but pig ignorance. We don't know the interest rate on our mortgage. We've yet to sit down and work out if what's going out is more than what's going in. This is not because we are stupid but because we are afraid.

Well, stupid and afraid. I'm afraid of the truth, because I can do nothing to change it. I think a lot of people feel the same. When it comes to money, I don't know what I'm doing. But Dick Fuld and all his ilk ... they were supposed to know. And if the experts can f*** it up, there really isn't much hope for the rest of us.