Yes, it was 40 degrees in Sydney on Sunday when I had to take a four-year-old to a party and then entertain her seven-year-old sister for a few hours.
We walked from bookshop to bookshop along Glebe Point Road - stopping in air-conditioned shops every couple of blocks.
No air, no air! And I'm not talking about Chris Brown and Jordin Sparks here.
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Apparently, it was no air even at Bondi Beach - no sea breeze. Still oppression. Maybe that's why I decided to start donating to the UNHCR's Emergency Response Team - when their volunteers stopped us along our Glebe climb.
Imagine this kind of heat but being stuck in a massive, humungous refugee camp - no home, no water, no food.
Really. With children. With old people. This is an Australian issue. We have so much space. So much area of land. This whole fear of refugees is so unacceptable.
Security is important but refusing people basic rights - that's not making our world more secure. That's just closing your eyes and pretending it will go away.
This is why I recorded Ahn Do's personal story at the Screen Producers Association of Australia conference last week.
Australians are not by nature mean - not at all.
They overwhelmingly voted to release indigenous people from protectorates in the 1960s - they wanted them to be counted as full citizens. That counts. Overcoming selfishness and prejudice at any point is an amazing thing.
And in the 1970s, we took in Vietnamese refugees with none of this horrible mean spiritedness - do not get me started on John Howard's role in the development of this ugly character trait.
I had no truck with John Howard until 2001 - to me it doesn't really matter which party rules, it matters that they do the right thing.
It was all this stuff which made me decide to write fiction in 2001 because I started to think the only way to really move people's hearts was to tell stories that touched their hearts - it's not hard news but it's a tougher act.
Why? Because it's about reaching those hearts which have switched off the news.
There was another thing that got me thinking over the past day or so.
I sat in a dark movie theatre watching A Christmas Carol in 3-D with the four-year-old on my knee and the seven-year-old huddled close.
As each spirit arrived, I needed to explain their presence, their meaning, and whether or not they were good or bad.
You should try this. It's an interesting trial by fire of your own understanding.
Why did Marley go "R--aaaaaaa!" at Scrooge?
Why was Marley angry?
Why was it a flame spirit?
Why did they visit the little boy?
Did Scrooge become good?
Why? Why did Marley have chains?
What's the Christmas spirit?
Where's Santa?
Is that Santa?
Where's Santa?
Do you have the Christmas spirit?
The following morning - no. The entire following day, I was rephrasing my answer and simplifying and refining answers all day.
And you know, I bet children in the 1800s didn't read A Christmas Carol because it's morally complicated - and then try explaining the Afterlife!
These kids like watching Caspar the Friendly Ghost - they don't go into what ghosts are in Caspar.
And even in something like Ruby Gloom - it's not explained.
Isn't that odd? Well, this issue of turning a blind eye came up really strong out of the Scrooge saga.
Why was Scrooge a bad man? Why did Marley go Raa--aaa!?
Well, because he turned a blind eye to other people's suffering and he didn't care about other people.
It's not enough to be a good businessman.
See. (YOU Liberals who don't want to change because it's too expensive to change the way we do things to protect our planet from climate change!!!!)
I reckon climate change actually started about the time Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol.
Now it's going to do something about the surplus population!
Probably this summer too.