Cleaner and gardener wanted. City wife preferred

Things are hard among the towers of Canary Wharf, where HSBC has made 500 of its London workers redundant.

According to my friend who works in the area, the place is emptying rapidly. Even the upmarket Japanese restaurant Ubon, a sister restaurant of Nobu, has closed down.

But the ripples of the credit crunch are fast spreading far beyond the City, to the shires. And it's the women who are taking charge: instead of staring into the distance, wondering how they'll cope, the City wives have got up and got on with it.

My corner of Buckinghamshire has its fair share of stockbrokers, bankers, insurers, estate agents and the like, people who, up until recently, felt safe and secure. Now some of my neighbours have lost their jobs; others are teetering on the brink. And it has been the wives who have had to try to balance the books.

One result is that we've all stopped sending our children to dippy after-school clubs. Who can afford Kumon maths these days? Trading in the Range Rover for something more economical looks a smart move too. But the really striking trend now is for mums to hawk their skills at the school gates.

"I'll even do your loo," promises one mother in my youngest son's class who is setting herself up as a cleaner. Another is taking in laundry. "I sat down and thought, what can I do?" she told me. "Then I realised I can do laundry. I've been doing it so long for my family, I might as well make some money out of it." And at least three of them are up for babysitting work.

Meanwhile a consortium of mothers are doing up people's gardens. They came round to my house last week and did the best job anyone has ever done on my weed-engulfed borders. Next week, I'm going with one of them to buy bulbs while another is going to show me how to actually get some blasted vegetables to grow in my veggie patch.

At first, I felt nervous about asking them to come and do some work for me. At the school gates we are all mums together. Wouldn't it feel awkward to watch them hacking and hoeing? Don't be silly. "We need the work," said one of the gardeners whose husband has lost his job. "It's cold, hard cash I need, not sympathy."

I'm all right for now, but who knows? If my luck changes I might have to join them. It feels like a turnaround. These are women who gave up work to raise their children. Going back to the office has not been an option. But now different skills have a whole new meaning — the ability to look after someone else's children, clean their house, iron their shirts. This is the new currency of these difficult times. A high-ranking job in a bank won't save you now but maybe the ability to wield a duster like a demon will.