As part of my gruelling schedule I was supposed to go to a breakfast with the U.S. Chief Economist, Beth Ann Bovino, but it was 7 degrees celsius in Melbourne at 6am, and I am not a cold weather, or an early morning person.

(Did I mention this already? That I’m not really a morning person?)

The prospect of many urns of percolated coffee, containing tepid, brunette water that only vaguely smells of coffee, laced with an inefficient amount of caffeine* (and easily confused, in every sense of the word, with the nearby urns of hot water and decaf) do not serve to sway me. I remain in my nice warm bed reading about the real life murderesses who inspired the musical ‘Chicago.’ As you do, on a cold winter’s morning.

(One of the perks of being in business for myself is that I no longer have to be at work at any particular time unless the client demands it. Yay me. )

I feel bad that I decided to skip the breakfast, because it was RSVP and Bovino is the U.S. Chief Economist, but I console myself that Donald Trump is in power, and that this unexpected turn of events, (his elevation to public office, not my decision to skip breakfast) is due to his being democratically elected President by the people of north America, and not a coup, which would be the expected turn of events.

As a double-degree qualified policy bureaucrat, and a feminist, I found myself wondering whether there would be any value in listening to an expert in a position of power, in my chosen profession, discussing the next twelve months in the global economy, and how she beat the glass ceiling, when Twitter seems to be the latest rage in policy setting tools.

(Did I mention that I also hate Twitter? Almost as much as I hate cold weather, early mornings and bad coffee.)

I remind myself we’re entering a post-industrial, post-sovereign economic era, and assuage myself that letting people down, because you don’t personally know them, is the new post-democracy black.

I resolve not to go to this breakfast, or any breakfast, ever again, until the U.S returns to some semblance of awareness of the rules of Statecraft and the ability to apply them, somewhere other than the toilet, in the middle of the night, whilst attending to a dicky prostate and constipation of the kind that Elvis Presley died from. But, did I mention that it’s seven degrees celcius here in Melbourne? And that I’m not really a morning person? Because there is also that.

*Buffet coffee is to coffee what toilet air freshener is to designer perfume. There ought to be a law against it.