In May of this year I raved on about the wondrous weather in Melbourne. I was enjoying Autumn with its vestment of brown and gold, its cool nights and invigorating breezes. I looked forward to doonas and scarves and warm cuddly dressing gowns. I thought about buying one of those blankets with sleeves. I even quoted Keats.

Well, that jubilation lasted about a fortnight. You can have too much of a good thing, you know. A drop of a few degrees in temperature and what was bracing becomes bloody unbearable. What was comforting, such as an open fire, becomes a longing for fresh air. Going outside resembles an Antarctic expedition. Should I take a coat or an anorak? Do I need gloves? How about the thermal underwear? What if it warms up? (I threw that in just for a joke).

Might as well take the lot. In Melbourne you never know. Actually, that’s not quite true. Cause you know that whatever you take with you is the wrong thing. You should have worn the Michelin Man coat with the extra warm collar, the vest, the Gortex which cost a fortune. All those things that would serve you well if you entered the Iditarod competition.

The thrill of it all does wear off pretty quickly and you wish that the season, which has already lasted a full fortnight, would be over. And then Winter comes and you deposit your entire woolly wardrobe into your car, just in case.

You start watching the weather forecast for your previous abode in Queensland and you wonder if high humidity in the tropics was really all that bad, after all. From this perspective a day or two of higher temperatures would be most welcome.

Not for long, just a few days of warmth to defrost the bones would be perfect.

A week of one kind of weather is enough, in my opinion. Enough to provide variety without becoming tedious. So Autumn is perfectly acceptable if it doesn’t last too long. The same goes for the other three seasons. I would like shorter seasons, perhaps a dozen of them throughout the year. You would never get bored with the stifling heat or freeze to death with the cold. Relief would be just around the corner.

Look at it as a rebirth, a constant renewal. It would hardly be worthwhile storing your Winter Woollies in the dark recesses of your wardrobe. They could remain permanently in the boot of your car with the sun lotion and swimgear. I’m not sure how practical that would be, though.

So let’s forget the change of clothes and concentrate on what I know to be true. Seasons are good but they go on for too long. Unfortunately, what seems to be a welcome change in the weather soon becomes an irritation. Nature is fickle but I am more so, I guess. “Here comes the Sun and I say it’s all right…” for a short while, that is.

I wonder how long it will be before the horrifying events of 9/11 are described as being an invention of history. Will 9/11 be a victim of deniers the way the Holocaust is being denied by vested interests?

It hardly seems possible, but I attended a function at Monash University last Wednesday evening which set off alarm bells in my mind. The function was meant to be a conversation with three academics, Jack Miles, Waleed Aly and Geoffrey Garrett with follow-up questions from the audience. It was being held four days after the ninth anniversary of 9/11 and its title was:-

9/11 America and Islam Nine Years On.

In spite of the miserable weather in Melbourne I was not going to miss this discussion as I regard 9/11 as a turning point in the way that the West and the U.S in particular view the Islamic world.

All three academics are respected scholars. I had heard Professor Garrett and Waleed Aly speak before and looked forward to what should have been an elucidating discussion on the set topic.

The conversation was animated. Jack Miles was a typical Californian University professor with very left leanings who worships President Obama. He did admit that the great white hope should have kept out of the Ground Zero mosque debate, but apart from that his hero could walk on water.

Waleed Aly could not understand why New Yorkers would object to the mosque since it was really a Y.M.C.A, a sort of gesture of friendship to N.Yorkers. Jack Miles added that the protests had been machinated by Republicans in anticipation of the coming November elections.

After about an hour and a half of very interesting discussions, I was puzzled by something that was missing in the whole conversation. Not once had any of the academics mentioned 9/11. Wasn’t this the topic for the evening? I checked the invitation. Yes, there it was in bold letters and yet not one of them had mentioned September 2001.

Exasperated by such a gross omission, I asked the question. Why was the set topic being ignored? I read out the topic and asked that it be discussed. Professor Garrett apologised but Professor Miles was adamant that Americans aren’t worried about terrorism as much as they used to be.

Was that any reason for not discussing the impact of 9/11? Were Americans really not concerned about 9/11 and terrorism any more? Or was this, as I suspect, a desire on the part of the liberals in the U.S to relegate the attack on the Twin Towers to a glitch, an aberration, something to shelve and forget?

I was outraged by this attitude. Miles even said that the U.S was such a violent nation that the only reason 9/11 made news is that the numbers of dead, almost 3000, was more than the usual dozen or so who are murdered every day in the States.

He apparently couldn’t differentiate between ordinary violent crime in the U.S and an attack by terrorists on the soul of the American people.

I imagined that in time, if academics like Miles had their way, 9/11 would be forgotten and that some of them would even claim it didn’t happen. Revisionists would triumph while the truth would lie dead.

p.s Following the function and as I was leaving, I was approached by at least a dozen people, people whom I’d never met before, who thanked me for my question. They had been wondering when the academics would get down to the set topic. Sometimes you just have to speak up.