It was a near-perfect early-Autumn day here yesterday. Early splashes of drifting cirrus cloud gave way by 11 in the morning to a watercolour-wash blue sky. One could amble about and see seasonal death unfold in the yellow-to-rust leaves falling to ground like so many tiny dying swans. If that sounds dark, it shouldn’t: for next Spring, the stone will be rolled away from the Saviour’s cave, and vegetation will rise again. You only Live Twice wrote Ian Fleming of James Bond; but if you’re a tree, you’ve cracked the Cryogenic thing.

I love Autumn because of that very sense of eternity – and an assuredness I’ve had for over thirty years now that, for all his idiotic pretensions, Homo sapiens is highly unlikely to destroy planetary life. If I was to personify such demideitistic self-imagery, then I would turn to the pathetic aims of Jeff Bezos and his incredibly…