It's funny how Spring sneaks up on you. I notice the obvious signs of its approach, the budding on the stems and the odd errant flower that has made an unexpectedly early entrance. There is also the perceptible warming of the air, the mildly scented eddies that suggest change is afoot. Then, all of a sudden, the jasmine is out, the plums rampantly in bloom. There is a constant drone of bees and of course, the sounds of people sneezing, though not necessarily in that order. Pollen can go to work at all hours.

Lunch with my beautiful wife in the city yesterday was uneventful, except that Sydney seemed more abandoned than last week. I am used now to the half-empty trains - what a blessing - but the streets in the very centre of town were thinly-populated canyons. Ordinarily they are surging with life.

I cannot help but feel that we are turning a page in the human project - if you don't mind me calling it that - in which survival depends on some key decisions that are being made now.  By that I mean things are done and things that are left undone, since not to act is also a part of decision-making. To watch the antics in America, a country that should be offering genuine leadership by word and example, is dispiriting, to say the least. There are lots of good people, of course, trying to make a difference.

But where the power lies there is a brain-dead rot that offers neither hope nor the prospect of change, just more of the same. That is a recipe for extinction.