The hop ranch that he had last seen in the full tide of prosperity was almost a ruin .

In one of Charles Dickens’s most sentimental scenes, the old coachman Barkis in “David Copperfield” delays his dying while the sea is full and coming onshore, but eventually “goes out with the tide”.

By the end of the year the tide was turning as the oil price slumped, but critics claimed that retailers were slow to pass on the full benefits.