It’s a colourless morning in Sydney. There’s a blankness all around as I park myself before the laptop and look out the window. The weather forecasters have earned their trust. It is as they said it would be. A sheet of rain cascades in a heavy slanting drizzle. There are definitely more than 40 shades of grey on display: The ashen hue of cinereous, the fading tan of taupe, the pale fawn of Isabelline; off to the far left the darkening tones of bistre; and further on the even darker tints of sable that in the days of British heraldry held up well for the eye but not today.

Not on a day like this. Today, they do nothing for my mood or my inspiration. If there is a breeze around it is, like imagination, hiding somewhere. Not a breath stirs the leaves on the trees. They hang limply and submissively, glistening wetly. The digital radio is describing traffic gridlock on the slippery roads to work, a truck has slewed out of its lane, veered sideways across two other lanes and come to a halt. It has, amazingly, brought about no serious accident or loss of life.

All this information is ironically being relayed from a chopper in the sky, which, through some fascinating feat of technology, is able to peer through the rain and clearly analyse what is happening many metres below. A solitary Indian mynah, looking oddly sorry for itself, ducks under a sheltered part of the fence and shakes its feathers dry. What do birds do on a day such as this? Much of their time after all is spent gathering food or nesting material. What a happy day for the worm when the rain puts the birds’ food-hunting on hold!

How it must appreciate the concept of total liberty without the fear of something from the sky falling on its head. On a day like this, what sort of nests do birds go back home to at dusk? An idle trawl through the sports stories on the Internet reveals that Australia’s brightest new young tennis hope has eventually run out of steam and lost in the quarter finals. Nicky Kyrgios is going to be ‘big’ the article forecasts. He is already physically a big young man one can see, yet only nineteen and only the second teenager after Roger Federer to make it to two quarter finals in Grand Slams. I prefer reading the sports pages first, following the advice of an old, now deceased judge, who said that those pages at least reflect/highlight man’s achievements as opposed to the front pages which throw up his litany-list of failures. Kyrgios may have failed but he has even in failing achieved something.

A story on the other pages, typically, wonders whether the word ‘terrorist’ should even be used any longer. The hypothesis is a bit hazy and, to me at least, adds yet another shade of greyness to the general nature of the day. Another article takes up the ongoing debate on freedom of speech, focusing on an Italian poet.

Back on the sports pages, the young Aussie captain has won the Alan Border Medal beating his nearest rivals by a handsome margin. It was thought his once-defective batting technique would not hold up to the demands of higher-level cricket.

He has proved everybody wrong and in doing so introduced a new awareness of unorthodoxy. The Indian cricket team, meanwhile, came and went in Sydney after playing only 16 overs, on a day just like this one. As a writer, I can tell you, there will be days like this; days when you awake and wonder what shall I write? And nothing will come, but still ... you must write. It is, I have found, the only way to push past the big foggy curtain that hangs in the mind, sometimes a difficult ask, but beyond which, as we all know lies a blaze of dazzling colour.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.