TIMES are so tough these days that I have been refreshing my memory concerning the four deadly horses of the apocalypse – messengers of our final doom.

The red horse stands for war and, certainly, we are threatened by wars and rumours of wars in more than one theatre. The truly apocalyptic danger arises out of recent events in Pakistan where the elected government is not able to suppress the Taliban.

Shamefully, the Pakistan government has allowed one Taliban-controlled area to operate a particularly extreme interpretation of Sharia which, it is alleged, provides for cruel and inhumane punishments and for men to treat their wives as sex slaves.

The latest news is that the Taliban are within 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad.

There can’t be many more terrifying outlooks than the Taliban in possession of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

The black horse represents famine and, in the shape of the credit crunch and the forecast long recession, it looks as if it is going to be trotting around for some time.

The pale horse is death and is always with us in many forms. As if those three nasty geegees were not bad enough, here comes the white horse – pestilence – in the shape of the looming prospect of a swine flu pandemic.

OUR options are pretty limited. We’re all so skint since Gordon Brown destroyed the economy that we can’t even afford a long holiday trip to escape. And where would you run to anyhow, with the swine flu going global?

We can always go down the pub – only the price of drink has gone up as well and the latest figures show pubs going out of business at the rate of six per day. The White Hart, next door but one to our house, shut last year.

I think, come lunchtime, I’ll nip across the road to our remaining local while it’s still there.

There must be at least a few affordable things we can do to cheer ourselves up? All suggestions gratefully received. As an old timer, I can remember Wilfred Pickles’ show – called Have A Go! – which toured works’ canteens and dished out small money prizes in exchange for answers to trivia questions.

The show was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme – a sort of forerunner of Radio Two – and it was hugely popular. One of the regular innocent questions Wilfred asked was: “Is there anything that costs you nothing, but gives you a thrill?”

That’s what we’re looking for in these hard-pressed times, isn’t it? Contestants would answer: “The smell of new mown hay.”

Or it would be the dawn chorus. Or the rattle of autumn leaves in the wind. At the moment, if we’re lucky enough to live near the countryside, we can at least go and look at the bluebells.

My wife kindly bought me my membership of Middlesex County Cricket Club for my Christmas present, so I can sneak off for a few hours at Lord’s. And another benefit of getting on in years is free transport here in London, so I can ride around on the Tube or a big red bus all day for free. That might be dodgy, though, and just the way to pick up swine flu.

It’s at times like these that words from The Litany spring to mind: “From plague, pestilence and famine, battle, murder and sudden death, Good Lord deliver us.”

■ Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.