I can’t honestly decide whether previous recessions weren’t as profoundly serious as this, or whether I’m just less uninformed as I hurtle into middle age - and therefore more conscious of the implications.

We all know about the big punches to UK Plc’s jaw: the deficit, the unemployment figures, the sluggish-at-best economic growth. But the real detail of what this means for you and me is yet to become apparent. I’m not saying it isn’t a matter of urgency to cut the deficit, or even reform certain public services; nor, I hope, am I being needlessly apocalyptic. But it’s one thing to hear Stephanie Flanders or John Philpott quoting huge figures; quite another if Auntie Hilda abruptly doesn’t get the quality of care she’s used to, or your child’s much-valued local library closes.

After all, our expectations as customers over the past 20 years have soared. This is no bad thing. Good customer service has, like cable TV, been imported from the US. And, also like cable TV, we think it’s probably a good thing, even though we’re not quite comfortable with it yet; but we certainly know enough about it to demand we’re given it.

So how will we react when customer service levels, broadly improved during the good times, inevitably go south, as tough decisions have to be made about resources? And how will representative bodies react? Already some unions are opposing all cuts on principle – even when those cuts are being proposed to save jobs. At what point should principles be shuffled off in favour of something flawed, but arguably less worse?

There’s 13 per cent unemployment in Ireland, one of our biggest export markets. Here, JobcentrePlus must be struggling to cope with the sheer volume – and with very different customers, including out of work professionals, such as architects. And that’s just as the public services start to release thousands of jobseekers into regions where opportunities are already threadbare.

Then again, the detail of some of the cuts, once finalised, hasn’t seemed quite as bad as originally advertised. Perhaps there’s been some canny expectation management here by HM government, whereby we’re counselled to expect the worst, and relieved when it turns out to be merely awful. Politically, whatever they say, I’m not at all convinced the Conservatives would have behaved any differently if they had been in power before 2010; or that Labour would behave any differently if it were in power now. Maintaining our triple AAA rating, with its implications for the interest on all those vast loans, is key – and that means cuts. It’s what the cuts themselves mean that is, of course, the real worry.

Despite serious misgivings about 2011, looking into the medium term, there’s every chance UK Plc could emerge leaner, fitter, more robust and more competitive – although it’s difficult to say now how public services will perform as we head towards the middle teens, or where employment opportunities will be found as the economy recovers. Will the UK reinvent itself as a result?

At this point, the most we can say is that at least nothing stays the same for long. Fortunately, that applies to bust times just as much as boom.