How about the heat? I don’t know about you, but this winter has seemed long and cold and I’ve missed feeling my feet and hands.

With us heading to a sweaty 30 degrees today, we can finally start shelving the flannelette PJs and sheets, the heavy doona can get shoved back onto the top shelf in the cupboard and finally, FINALLY, we can ready ourselves to shift our exorbitant heating bills to cooling ones.

The BBQs will fire up, the hay fever sufferers will start sneezing and the office dresses will change to brighter colours and get just that little bit shorter.

Yep the hallmarks of spring and summer are upon us, but does anyone else find it strange that despite the increased temperatures and all of these obvious changes, we still can’t regularly see men’s knees?

Don’t believe me?

If you work in the city and haven’t already popped out for your lunch break, look around: there will be navy, black and grey pants, trousers and slacks for miles with the only allowance for the higher degrees the occasional rolled up sleeve.

It seems strange to me that in an age where it’s accepted and fashionable to wear a bra to a nightclub or have more of your butt outside your bathers than in, men’s office and work pants seem to be the last bastion of timorousness.

So gents, seize the day and free the legs… just the legs.

I suppose I should be secretly delighted that this might be the one circumstances in which men are faced with some sort of discomfort in their daily dressing. After years of cramped calves and sore feet from high heels and shoulder dents from bra straps that stole most of our early pay checks, it’s fair to say us women have taken the lion’s share of dressage sufferance.

But if we’re ignoring any quid pro quo pettiness, surely it’s time our office blokes can get into the morning commute in shorts?

Are we afraid that once we give this go-ahead, they’ll become way too short, a la the rise and rise of skirt hems?

We can clearly rule out the footy ones, the boxers, and anything made from that parachute material that makes a swish, swish, swish sound when you walk, and as far as I’m concerned, the only people that ever need to wear ones with the undies built into them had better be running the uni loop whilst training for a tilt at the Olympic steeplechase.

Let’s also say a hard no to the contour hugging, ’70s short-shorts which are essentially the equivalent of the lowcut top and push-up bra combination.

After all, the last thing any of us want is for men to spend valuable work minutes telling their colleagues to ‘look up here’.

But with all of that, why can’t a smart pair of tailored shorts be a viable option to match the white collars in our offices?

It’s not like we haven’t been here before. Whilst some have perhaps scorched it from their memory, others must remember when shorts, long socks and the occasional safari suit made it onto the city streets in the 1970s: as office fashion, it was de rigueur.

I know, I know, it’s the casualisation of the workplace you’re all worried about, right?

But in companies that are starting to see everything from large portions of our front gardens, to pets being brought in to sit under desks for personal comfort, a man’s pant length is a strange hill for us to still be dying on.

A 1970s Australian catalogue showcasing shorts for the office.

Ever since high school I’ve wondered at the practicality of dress codes.

I had no problem wearing a uniform and understood the need for this type of conformity with school students, but for the life of me I couldn’t work out why my Year 11 English teacher had to wear a bow-tie in the Queensland warmth.

To be honest, the actual rule was something along the lines of ‘male teachers had to wear a tie or equivalent whilst in the classroom’ so the bow bit happened because he wore one once and it became an easy birthday and Christmas gift from his friends and extended family.

But as we all sat there sweltering in the mid to high 30ss with a percentage of humidity that would tighten even a poodle’s curls, it seemed ridiculous he’d want anything choking his neck in the near stifling heat.

Look, our offices have already scaled back the matching suit and tie and the tech revolution brought T-shirts and jeans along with videogaming and blockchains, so why not something which would bring genuine comfort?

So gents, seize the day and free the legs… just the legs. I swear you’ll never go back. Once you do that, we can start talking about those ties.

Ali Clarke presents the breakfast show on Mix 102.3. She is a regular columnist for InDaily.