Days Like These: 'Our credit got crunched, so the takeaway sag aloo is banned until 2119'

The credit crunch finally struck home last week. I can't claim, as someone who recently answered the Weakest Link question, "What is 58 plus two?" with a confident "59", to be an expert on the finer points of the economy but I do know that there is trouble in the air when Matthew announces a crisis meeting. He said we needed "to discuss the implications of the current global fiscal crisis and how we should respond to it".

I ordered an Indian takeaway to eat during the meeting and as I did so Matthew harangued me with some new guidelines. For instance, the giant prawn starter is not for the foreseeable to be countenanced, and a ban on tandoori lamb chops is not be lifted unless and until Iceland is back on its feet. I, of course, asked why we were ordering food from a restaurant that bought its red meat on the advice of Kerry Katona and Matthew stared at me sorrowfully while lecturing me about Iceland's ditching of a currency peg equivalent to 131 kronur per euro.

He said that it was no joking matter and that we, as a household, were on the verge of having to make the same sort of hard decisions as Prime Minister Geir Haarde had been forced to make in the last, terrible week. He went on to stipulate further that just the one chicken korma would be allowed, one pilau rice, and a shared portion of sag aloo.

"If it's good enough for Alistair Darling and his treasury team when they are putting together a half-trillion rescue package," he said piously, "it's good enough for us. Until further notice, there is an absolute moratorium on the brinjal bhaji, the keema nan and above all the giant prawn."

Apparently, what little we have in our pension plans would no longer cover the cost of a lamb bhuna and we have to start cutting our spending now. I made it very clear, however, that the Dorset cottage we have been renting was off the negotiating table, arguing that a bolt hole in the country is now an essential rather than a luxury.

Matthew was forced to agree. He had been saying incessantly since late that very morning that ours is not a road, even by Shepherd's Bush standards, in which anyone normal would feel comfortable during these very rough economic times. This happened to be the day after the discovery that someone had siphoned his petrol tank in the night.

Once the cottage was in the clear, however, accusations and counteraccusations were hurled across the korma and the aloo regarding who left the sitting room lights on overnight and who forgot to pay the congestion charge twice last week. The meeting was finally adjourned at 11.24pm, by which time we had agreed that in the light of the petrol siphoning incident, from now on we will not be completely filling our tanks. We will maintain a low level of petrol for essential journeys only. It was also agreed that we should not indulge in any luxuries, with a more detailed plan on this front to follow.

The following evening I found myself, as I drove to collect Louis from a schoolfriend's house in Putney, in a gridlock traffic situation and with the needle on the fuel gauge hovering over "Empty". "Oh, for heaven's sake," wailed Matthew down the phone, "there is always at least 30 to 40 miles of petrol in reserve." He was having supper with a friend at a very good, very expensive restaurant in SW1. (I was surprised indeed that he would be so vulgar as to use his mobile in such a place.) How this evening out was not a luxury I could not fathom. "Remember Cosmo Kramer?" he continued, referring to an episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer took a car for a test drive and kept going for miles with the needle on "E".

I did remember it, and just as I was telling him that Seinfeld is a sitcom, not a motoring documentary, he interrupted me in order to suggest that he and his friend had a bottle of Sancerre to go with the starters. Then he told me to stop being neurotic and that he would bring me back a leg of grouse.

The car duly coughed to a halt on a double yellow line, and since all London petrol stations not owned by Tesco appear to have closed down, I abandoned ship, walked a mile in the rain to Barnes then took a taxi – which cost £50 for the round trip. The towing fine for the car was £250. The midnight feast grouse doggy-bag (approx £25) was delicious but takeaway sag aloo is now definitely banned until 2119.

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