'Credit crunch' sounds too much like an appetising snack. 'Secured loan' makes you feel all safe and warm, when it shouldn't.

But when the pundits talk of a 'hangover' from years of irresponsible borrowing, they've got it right.

If the days of easy credit were like a long, blurry New Year's Eve party, we're now suffering from the inevitable come-down.

The dawning of the crisis a few months ago was like that jolting eviction from the halls of sleep, the dry-mouthed panic as we find ourselves washed up on the cold, shingly shore of the repentant morning.

There has followed much soul-searching and blaming: Why did nobody stop me when I was going too far? Did someone spike my credit card? Why didn't the lenders warn us of the strength of that stuff they were dishing out so freely?

Oh, they did – but we were too busy partying to read the small print.

Now we're tending more towards the acceptance that, while we might have been rashly overindulgent, it's not the end of the world.

Recovery is possible. And we're soberly promising to be more careful in future.

Some of us, me included, are responding by taking our holidays on British soil, however rain-sodden it might be.

As befits someone suffering from a hangover, I'm tending towards the soothing greenery of the British countryside rather than the harsh glare of the Mediterranean sun.

Whitby is where I'll be by the time you read this, famous for its Goths, vampires and kippers.

It's not just the money, it's the baby.

She's 13 months old now, and has developed a screaming habit, so that even when she's quite content she'll let out an ear-splitting noise, just for fun.

I wouldn't enjoy the plane ride. And nor would you, if you were sitting next to us.

So we're making it easy on ourselves, and we'll take our chances with the weather.

I'm looking forward to dining on fish 'n' chips in the car while the rain drums on the roof, rediscovering the modest pleasures of windswept, hungover, credit-crunched Britain.

- I've been writing this column long enough now to have spotted which subjects inspire a response, and in what form.

Attack a political party and you get letters for publication on the letters page.

But some subjects provoke emails instead.

My piece from two weeks ago, about men in crisis, got no letters, but some passionate email correspondence from aggrieved men alerting me to their cause, blog, hatred of Harriet Harman, etc.

The fact that these men prefer the relative anonymity of the web and email suggests that they fear a backlash if they air their grievances in the more public forum of the letters page.

Another group that emails but rarely wants to go public is Muslim women.

Might there be some parallel between the two?