It was only last Tuesday that I was cheering as the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) handed us the recessionary version of 'peace in our times'. Peace had been secured on the economic front, but it was fragile and potentially unstable.
Sure enough, last Wednesday the fiscal equivalent of the invasion of Czechoslovakia happened when the National Institute of Economic and Social Research told us that the recession was not over, and recovery would be slow and painful.
To have my hopes so rudely smashed in fewer than 24 hours is quite hard, even for the most stoic optimist. All I can say is, thank God for brands like Asda. They accept the realities of the current economic situation. Consumers need things to cost less, whether they believe the BCC or the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
However, Asda delivers it in a way that is suggestive of wartime Britain: putting its best foot forward, stiffening its upper lip and battening down the hatches. Wartime metaphors aside, the point I make is a serious one.
In the past I have wondered how brands would behave in recession-bombed Britain, and I'm pleased to say that most are providing the role of help and solidity in a world of rapidly changing headlines.
Asda's advertising should never be judged through the lens of awards Perspex, but on what it's trying to offer the people it holds most dear. I love the idea that I could go in with a fiver, and come out being able to clean myself, eat healthily, give my kids a treat, and spend the rest of it searching out the other 6997 ways of spending a pound. It is, without a doubt, a fine example of retail blanket bombing, which I should probably be decrying it for. No loyalty cards are needed, and here's one in the eye to you, Tesco: I'll throw in an offer while I'm telling you that shower gel is only a pound.
Strangely, I don't mind this cacophony of cheeriness, because that's exactly the feeling it gives me: it cheers me up. It makes me feel like someone's on my side, that they might help me get through this without having to drop my standards too much - or, worse, resort to rationing. It empathises with me without sending me into the pit of despair.
I think I feel a wartime ditty coming on: 'Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Chancellor?'