The Farmer has entered his 70th year. He has celebrated by playing for the MCC's second team, his first game of cricket since he had his bionic hip fitted five months ago. He was not a success.

The rugged hitter who in 1958 second-top scored on the famous St Lawrence ground at Canterbury, batted number 11 and was out, caught in the slips off his first ball.

He did redeem himself later by taking a not-altogether straightforward catch in the slips, but a glittering career in cricket has been left too late.

Perhaps I can become a sage. Yes, I think I'll try that. After all, for at least two years before it came to pass I predicted the current housing price slump.

Okay, here goes.

All is not lost for Gordon Brown. The economy is the main problem and it is showing the first signs of recovery. Things may not actually be getting better, but the rate at which the decline is accelerating is falling.

Take inflation. There may be some worse figures to come but that's just because statistics are always out of date. It is caused by higher food prices which are in turn forced up by the spiralling oil price.

Well, oil is already down 24% from its peak. That should take the pressure off inflation for a start.

The Breadwinner, who watches these things, has paid up to 133.9p a litre for diesel recently but she got a fill last week at just 119.9p.

Cheaper fuel will impact upon the price of food. Diesel for the tractors and the grain driers has come down already from a high of more than 70p a litre to not much above 50p if you go to the right supplier.

And that other huge cost, the price of inorganic fertilisers, will also be affected by the fall in the price of fuel. Already there is good news from Russia: the price of potash, so important in the compounds which have trebled in price over the last few years, has slumped.

The Russian price is down from £180 a tonne to £85, according to Chris Baxter of Harbro, the animal feed company.

Grain prices are already down by a third from their peak, and news (from Russia again) is that the harvest on the Steppes has been so good that the pressure is on for a further fall in cereals. That doesn't help our growers, but it helps keep down the price of chicken, pork and beef.

The credit crunch is in the process of rescuing us from the profligacy of the bankers. The ridiculous price of houses is coming down, and so is personal debt, as the British find ways of spending less, part of the art of living which has been ignored for years.

Waste is being cut at all levels. Only the boy racers are still booting their cars up to sixty in six seconds from a standing start. The pubs, clubs and restaurants are suffering as people try a bag of tattie crisps and a bottle or two of beer at the telly instead of a nicht oot.

Sanity is returning to Britain. All is not yet lost for the Labour Party at Westminster and even their battered prime minister will survive if the suits in his own party don't get him first.

If he can just hang in there. If he can stop boring us to death with the entire manifesto when a simple "yes", "no" or even "maybe" would do.

If he can leave "Just-Call-Me-Dave" as much airtime as possible so we can get on with getting bored with him, Gordon can still win the next election. There you are.

I had the best haul of birthday presents since I was a boy. There was a bottle of whisky from the Younger Investment, the promise of a 10th grandchild from the Wasting Asset, a cashmere wool jersey from the Recovery Stock, some balm to stop the chafing of the old bottom, which makes training on the bicycle so unpleasant, from the Elder Investment. The Breadwinner gave me a book by a vet who left the North-east in 1966 to work in Kenya.

It was just after independence, and I have been struck by the task that Hugh Cran, a loon of 26, had taken on.

He could only speak one word of Swahili, and jambo (hello) doesn't get you far when you want to ask "How long has she been in labour and can I have hot water and a towel?"

The young vet was given a copy of a Swahili phrase book but it wasn't much use. It contained such phrases as "Boy! You have been using my razor again. There are black hairs on it", and, "Sergeant, give that man 10 strokes of the Kiboko. He has been caught stealing sugar for the third time this week!"

It really is no wonder they threw us out.

Even 20 years later, when the Breadwinner and the Farmer went to Kenya, we were told that we didn't need to learn the whole Swahili language. "You just need, jambo, asanti sana (thank-you) and bugger off!"

And Miles To Go Before I Sleep, by Hugh Cran, is published by Merlin Unwin Books.