"'Twas tough," I said, basking in a glow of heroism. What did I do in the war? Those of us who lived through – and survived – the 1970s and 80s are suddenly the subject of awe and admiration from a generation that never experienced a recession. Actually, I think they're looking at
me and thinking: "If she got through a recession then it's a walk in the park".

But make the most of the attention while it lasts, I say to my fellow veterans. Throw modesty and survivor guilt to the winds. Stick out your chest and show off your medals and the darning needles you bought for the emergency, because at the end of the day all you can really tell this untested generation is that the tide will inevitably turn, and they can go ahead and apply for that helicopter licence. Whatever you do, don't tell them that you were a squanderer!

And don't tell them either that you enjoyed a free Christmas dinner every year in the middle of the most vicious spending cuts, courtesy of either the health board or Shannon Development. But every recession is different, the experts say. And so are the aftereffects. Some of us have come through deep depressions, some of us are children of Dev's dreary Eden, and to be quite honest some of us were never really sure whether we were advancing or receding. So what do we really know about this one either?

To be quite honest, I can't really remember much about the last major recession. All I know is that I was there, in deficit spending like the Government of the day, deeply shell-shocked at times, and concussed from a blow by the taxman who had just robbed me of more than half my earnings.

But it didn't dampen my ambitions or hopes. I was driving a yellow Fiat 127, sporting big hair and Dallas- inspired shoulder pads and hoping that the world's oil supplies wouldn't run out before I could afford a DeLorean.

But when the tide finally turned, they had stopped manufacturing those gullwinged legends, big hair was naff and the first hints of global warning were threatening my expansionary vision. But we had more on our minds besides money and possessions during the last recession – like the threat of a nuclear holocaust for instance.

So real was the threat, that Limerick Corporation built a state-ofthe- art, fully equipped, nuclear shelter under the old City Hall – for themselves and their officials – while half the country queued up at the dole office. I presume the bunker is still there, if anyone feels the current recession turbulence too much to bear.

Rumours abounded that we were going to be taken over by predatory world bankers and I remember thinking to myself: "Bring them on. We've been invaded before. Anyway, they can't be worse than the taxman and they might put manners on the bank manager who wouldn't give me a loan for a De Lorean".

A grand-uncle of mine, who had emigrated to America, lost all his money in the Wall Street crash – at least that's what he said happened to it – so it wasn't as if we weren't a recession- hardened family anyway. So what do I say to this generation then, jaded as I am from Oliver James' aptly described "affluenza"?

What can I say except this: that we survived and some of us prospered without having to resort to moonshining, that the rising tide when it came did not lift all boats, as it promised, and that, in the end experience, taught us nothing much.