I thought we were in the middle of a credit crunch.

Yet, recently, every shop I’ve been in has offered me a store card. Not just offered it – virtually forced me to take one. “Oh, go on…go on…” they say, like the persuasive Mrs Doyle plying cups of tea in Father Ted.

If I worked in a shop and a dishevelled-looking individual like myself presented at the check-out and asked whether any further reductions were likely on a £2.50 T-shirt, I wouldn’t then smile sweetly and offer them a store card with a 40 per cent interest rate.

It is almost as confusing as those people on the news who keep saying how cheap things like houses and cars have become. Perhaps naively, I took this information on board and set out to buy them both, hoping to secure them for under £50.

When I arrived at the estate agents, I was irritated to discover that homes are around the same price as they were last time I looked two years ago, with not much on offer below £100,000.

The same with cars – the market is, apparently, in such a bad way, that I hoped to pay outright. But as soon as I reached the forecourt, I realised that prices have remained as high as ever, and a loan at a colossal rate of interest would be required.

We are told that bargains are out there, but even in the thick of the January sales – which, let’s be honest, start in November and are virtually over by January – it is not easy to find them.

At least not for the things we really need. On Saturday afternoon I wracked my brain long and hard as to whether I would ever really have daily need of an electronic toe nail clipper – after all it was reduced from £34.99 to just £8.99. I decided against it.

Where are all these amazing bargains I keep hearing about? You would think the combination of the credit crunch and the sales would result in a bumper price-slashing-fest for us consumers.

But no. To my mind, the only reductions worth taking advantage of are cut-price Christmas cards and wrapping paper.

True bargains – you know the sort, a new kitchen for a fiver, a new sofa for £1 or a 16-night break in the Maldives for 35p – are like the Holy Grail.

A true bargain, says a shopping website, is when you intend to buy an item and then find it has been massively reduced. I’m still waiting for that to happen.

Like they say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch – generally speaking, even in a recession, it will set you back at least a tenner.