Credit crunch and cod roe

As warnings of a full-blown recession grow, Dave Harvey, the BBC's business correspondent in the West Country, is travelling the region to see if real firms are feeling the pinch. On Wednesday he was in Bristol.

Matt Lloyd is exasperated by his bank's recent behavior

So Peter Mandelson wants banks to get lending again. It can't come a moment too soon for Matt Lloyd, who runs a design firm in Bristol.

"We've got everything in place, but the bank doesn't want to know," Mr Lloyd tells me. "If they won't lend to us, who will they lend to?"

It seems a compelling case. Six months in profit, £200,000 on the table from an American investor, and a track record with a High Street bank. So why did they turn him down this time?

"They just cited the 'current economic climate'," Mr Lloyd tells me. He's obviously exasperated.

I met Mr Lloyd on Corn Street, the old commercial heart of Bristol. Here, Victorian corn traders coined the term "cash on the nail".

People are cutting back on luxuries, so a gorgeous chocolate pud for a fiver is an affordable treat on Friday Ruth Dooley, Grant Thornton

The nails are, in fact, four foot high iron pillars on top of which deals were sealed.

You paid your cash, you got some corn. The kind of old-fashioned dealing that might be making a comeback.

'We're all doomed!'

Today, the nails are piled high with pumpkins. Striped umbrellas shield farmers selling cauliflowers, honey and wild boar sausages.

David Felce has little time for bankers

Corn Street has become a farmers' market, the old banks now house pubs and organic cafés. It is not a bad picture of how the British economy has changed.

"Doom, doom, we're all doomed!" calls a fish smoker.

Straw boater and apron on, big smile on his face, David Felce points a mocking finger at a couple of men.

They are actually small business advisers, but he just sees the suits.

"It's the bankers! They got us in this mess, and now they're trying to help people out! What a joke!"

The queue for his smoked salmon and cod roe is massive. Mr Felce is clearly not suffering.

"We're in the real economy, selling real food here, not the virtual world of weird money and dodgy deals."

'Cheap thrill'

There is an even longer queue at the chocolate stall. French tortes, made in Frome.

"A cheap thrill in gloomy times", observes a local analyst.

Ruth Dooley handles plenty of small firm accounts at Grant Thornton, and she reckons the chocolate man is onto something.

"People are cutting back on luxuries, so a gorgeous chocolate pud for a fiver is an affordable treat on Friday," she says.

In fact, all the traders report steady, if difficult, sales.

Pork and chicken farmers are fighting higher fuel costs, the honey man had a washout of a summer.

But credit crunch? Not here.

To see that, you have to look above the umbrellas, to the sandstone pillars that once housed Bristol's banks.