Have you ever heard tell of a 'mandle', f-list? My mother went out for coffee this morning, and while she was waiting for her friend, she eavesdropped on the people at the table next door. As you do. 'They were talking about fruit,' she said. 'One was saying how many nectarines she'd got off her tree and the other one said she'd had some great mandles. Then Val arrived and I didn't get to find out what a mandle was.'

I don't know what a mandle is either. And I've tried searching for it as 'mandle' and 'mandal' and as many other variations as I can think of and I've still got no idea. Personally, I think my mother will benefit from that free hearing test she's entitled to. I can't think what word she misheard, though. Mandarin? Bramble? Apple?

Still no more camels on the beach. This is the end of the tourist season, so I think I've missed getting a photo of them. This morning there were little pavilions set up at one end of the beach. Reading the paper when I got home, I found the pavilions were part of the statewide nipper competition that's on today (nippers being junior lifesavers). Seven hundred children on one little beach, ready to save lives. That's reassuring.

Up the other end of the beach was one of those boot camp groups. I would rather gnaw my own arm off than do that, but I have to admit it wasn't as awful as I imagined. The guy running it was just calling instructions – 'Run!' or 'Turn!' or whatever – not actually shouting at individuals. It was more like a PE lesson than an army drill, but that's still not my idea of fun.

For my walks, I have purchased a Jimi wallet, so I can drive to the beach with my licence and money for the papers on the way home, without bothering with a bag or worrying about them being loose in my pocket. I got the ruby one. I am delighted with my purchase.

I am currently watching my first ever episode of CSI: Miami. I can't decide if David Caruso is deliberately making his performance hilarious or not.

I have been following some guy's countdown of the best contemporary British TV detectives. TV only, that is; not counting their book selves. I have been dubious about his choices, particularly when he ranked Inspector Lewis above Inspector Morse. That's not right, is it? Then this morning, the ultimate dubious choice: Inspector Frost at number one! And Inspector Barnaby didn't rank at all. Hmph.

I upgraded my MacBook to OSX Lion last week, and was promptly dismayed to find that my USB modem no longer worked. Tragedy! I've spent the last week updating drivers and doing stuff I don't really understand and today, finally, happily, I've got it working. Only now I can't upload to flickr from it. Sigh.

Last night I finished reading this book, which was good. Good, right up until the end, which ( I'll put under a cut in case anyone else is planning to read it )

Today I offered the Next Doors some of the celery growing in my garden, which is all ready to be eaten right now. Brian came round to get it, bringing with him my canine admirer, Chester. Wasn't he excited about that? So many new things to sniff, including, oh dear, Percy. I didn't realise he was asleep under a bush. Chester was so pleased to meet a new friend. He barked and danced about. Percy swiped. Chester thought this was a great game and charged in. Percy stalked out. I thought he'd jump over the fence to get away, but he didn't panic. He didn't even hiss. He walked coolly round the back of the bush and smacked Chester from behind. Chester decided perhaps he didn't want to play with this grumpy creature after all and came to talk to me instead. Percy went back to sleep.

I was disappointed with this year's season of MasterChef Australia. Someone (Angela) told me I should watch Junior MasterChef instead and I scoffed. Scoffed, f-list! Well, I scoffed too soon, it turns out. I watched the first episode tonight and now I am hooked. Where else can one see a ten-year-old announce that today she will be making duck raviolo in broth? Or a boy of a similar age tell the judges that his dish is titled 'An Adventure for the Palate'? In both those cases, the kids were poorly served by whoever does the on-screen captions, because the girl's single raviolo was captioned as ravioli and the adventure for the palate was listed as duck with wild rice salad.

I think my favourite moment came when one of Australia's most lauded chefs, a man who would have apprentices jumping at his every word, told one of the kids that his duck needed a little bit more time to be properly cooked, and the boy said, 'Yeah, I'll think about it,' in a tone that suggested he wouldn't be doing any such thing.

I watched it with my mother and quite early on, when they were introducing the judges, the next judge to come out was clearly going to be Matt Moran. So when the announcer said, 'He did this, he did that, and he is...,' I said, '...a big lizard,' just as my mother said, 'Voldemort!' What do you think, f-list? Australian celebrity chef Matt Moran: does he look like Voldemort or a big lizard?



1. Aphid soup, 2. Just some of my many aphids, 3. 1977 and 2008, 4. Storm clouds over Joan Next Door's roof, 5. Draught excluder at the garage door, 6. I should probably tie it back when I'm trying to type, 7. Chester tries out the cat ramp, 8. I am unimpressed you let a dog in, 9. Broccoli

Happy news! After an international aid mission, I have finally managed to open the jar of marinated capsicum strips. I'm sure you've all been on tenterhooks waiting to know that.

The MasterChef Australia final is on tonight. I am not as enthused as I was this time last year. I've been watching, though, which means I have seen more advertising for Coles (the supermarket chain that sponsors the show) than is good for a person. The ads show staff and customers roaming the supermarket, waving giant red hands and singing. Singing badly. And what they are singing badly is Coles' slogan about its prices being 'down, down', to the tune of either 'Downtown' or 'Down Down Deeper and Down'. If the end of MasterChef means I never have to see this again, it can't come too soon. (There was a little boy singing it as he followed his mum around the supermarket today. There's no escape.)

( Photos of the day )

1. Yesterday I had to ring a woman whose name was Aleica. That was her name as it appeared on her letterhead and in her email address. But when she answered the phone, she said, 'Good morning, Alicia speaking'. I feel personally affronted at this abuse of my name. That's not even a phonetic rendering of it. I told my mother at dinner, writing it down to show her the outrageousness of it, and she said, 'But a Leica is a camera!' Good one, Mum.

2. Yesterday, my colleague Brian cut up a homegrown pumpkin he had in storage and gave each of us at work a quarter. For some reason, we all decided to put our pumpkin slices on the top of our desks. It was slightly odd, going to talk to someone and finding them sitting behind a piece of pumpkin, and then going to the next room and finding the same thing. It was a little disappointing we didn't have any visitors to baffle.

3. Wandering the streets at lunch time, a man asked if I could direct him to the council offices. I'm not good at giving directions. I wish I knew what it is about me that says, 'Ask me! I know the way!' Whatever it is, it's priming people for disappointment. As it happens, the council offices were nearby, on the other side of the block from where we were standing, so the directions to get there should have been simple: go the end of the block, turn right, go the end of the block, turn right. But, oh dear, renovations to the performing arts centre mean that the footpath there is blocked off, and erection of the tents for the Fun4Kids winter holidays festival on the civic green mean that another part of the footpath is also blocked off, making matters complicated. Happily, we were standing about ten metres away from a public street map, so I showed him on that. Except I didn't, because the YOU ARE HERE arrow is pointing at the wrong place. Helpful. So I had to give him the actual directions: go to the end of the block, cross the road, turn right, go to the end of the block, cross the road, go straight ahead to the pedestrian crossing, cross the road, turn right, enter the tent, and once you're in there, there should be signs telling you how to get to the library and council offices. I hope there are, anyway. I watched him go as far as the tent and if there aren't signs, he'll have been wandering about in there all night. He came to Warrnambool for business and was never seen again. There's a thriller waiting to be written.

4. After I watched the man get into the tent, I turned back the way I came and realised I could have just told him to walk through the council car park and turn left. Oops.

5. My mother had dinner with me after her Pilates class. While she was at that, her partner John rang. 'I've got a note here,' he said, 'that says BOTH TOES. I'd only write that down if your mum told me to do something, but I can't remember what and I don't want to ask her.' So I said, 'What's wrong with your toes?' Nothing. 'You don't need to put ointment on them, or bandages, or something?' No. We agreed it was a mystery.

6. He rang back fifteen minutes later and said, 'Potatoes!'

7. Not that they needed potatoes on their shopping list after that, because I gave them the pumpkin quarter.

8. Last night on MasterChef, one of the competitors had a bake-off with a woman from the CWA (Country Women's Association, which is like the UK's WI). Merle had seventy years' baking experience, has won hundreds of ribbons at agricultural shows ('I've been a winner more often than I've been a loser,' she said), and they were using her hand-written recipe. The contestant was never going to win against that. She even brought her knitting to do while her cake cooked, bless her.

9. They made something called a Peach Blossom Cake, which is apparently a vintage CWA recipe. Maybe in the northern states. My grandmother was in her local CWA and they'd never heard of Peach Blossom Cake. They would have called it a marble cake (because it's got pink and white batter marbled through it), but they weren't concerned with matching the pink batter to the icing, which was quite important to Merle. Remember that if you want to make one. (You'd think they could have taken a photo of the cut cake, to show the marbling inside.)

10. My grandmother was always a bit sniffy about CWA members who entered cakes and jams and such in agricultural shows. It was odd seeing MasterChef oohing at Merle's ribbons last night, thinking how disapproving my grandmother would have been. Confident in her ability to out-bake all-comers, I think she looked down on people wanting prizes for validation.

So, there is this. I mean, good luck to her, but on the other hand, the collector who paid $24,000 for it is going to feel a bit foolish sooner or later.

Today in my mailbox: three envelopes. Two of them were from charities, neither of which I have ever donated to before. Both of them attached five cent pieces to the letter. Some sort of 'we'll give you a little bit of money, so you'll give us more' plan. But it never works on me. It just seems silly.

The other letter was from my superannuation fund (retirement planning), which sent me some information about ethical investing, along with what I first thought were three little matchbooks. The first one said 'Heat up your investment' and it had fake matches topped with chilli seeds. The second one said 'Seeding your future' and it's fake matches were topped with tomato seeds, and the third said 'Rocket your savings', which was rocket seeds. So out of my three rubbish letters today, I profited by ten cents and three packets of seeds. Not bad for junk mail.

Last night I had the TV on while I pottered about in another room. In the distance, I could hear a true crime show, which was about ( something horrible. ) Not really my cup of tea, so I switched it off, just as they were interviewing a woman who knew the murderer. She said in a bored voice: 'As soon as I saw it on the news, I said to my husband, "Oh, that'll be Kathy". I wasn't surprised at all.' Not at all? Not even a little bit? I think I would be, even if I did think Kathy was a nutter.

That was a bit grim, wasn't it? Wookiee the Chew will make up for it.

I don't want to start a stampede, but apparently jute floor mats are only $9.95 at Lincraft. I heard that on the radio while I was on hold this afternoon. Hurry in.

Do you remember my remittance advices? The ones I spent half an afternoon last week trying to fix, only to work out that it was better to print them on paper with a personalised footer instead? Well, I printed 100 copies that day, and I've used maybe 10, at most, since. This morning I couldn't find the remaining 90 pages anywhere, so I asked my colleague and office-mate, Brian, if he'd seen them. 'Oh,' he said, looking guiltily at his new message pad, 'I chopped that up yesterday for scrap paper.' So I've printed another hundred copies and put it next to our printer with a post-it saying that it's not scrap paper. Not that he'll need to make himself a new message pad for ages: he cuts each sheet into four with the guillotine, so he's now got 360 A6 pages to work his way through.

I feel I should warn you, f-list, that the new season of MasterChef Australia started this week. So that's the winter months sorted. Will this year bring us anything as mad as the deconstructed cupcake (crumbs on a stump) or as vile as the chocolate mousse drizzled in olive oil? As I write, half the contestants went fishing and had to cook what they caught. The ones who didn't fancy that got to stay home and cook the judges' choice of sea food. This turned out to be crocodile, which, it's fair to say, poleaxed them. One of them is planning to cook a crocodile schnitzel, which are two words I've never thought of together before. Will the judges like it? (No, it was chewy. So we've all learnt something tonight.)

Help me with my civic duty, f-list!

The City by the Sea's council is considering changing our bins. At the moment, the council provides each house with an 80 litre rubbish bin that is collected weekly and a 240 litre mixed recycling bin (papers, tins, plastics) that is collected fortnightly. The fees for this are in the yearly rates.

I (and I assume, many others) also have a 240 litre green waste bin, for which I pay a private contractor $9 per collection (I have mine collected monthly), which has nothing to do with the council. I put my food scraps in the compost bin and/or the worm farm.

The council has just sent out a survey checking interest in three new bin options. These aren't mutually exclusive; we get a YES/NO vote for each.

( The options )

There is also a comments box, which I have used to suggest daylight collection times. Our bins are currently collected between 9pm and dawn, which means I can be woken up four times each bin night and I'm over that. They have explained before that the collection must be done at night because children are running about during the day and might be squashed; I think it has more to do with the bin men enjoying the higher rate of pay that would apply to night work.

Anyway, what do you think? Do you have genius rubbish collecting schemes that I could suggest?



Last night I saw an advertisement for coverage of the forthcoming royal wedding. On this particular network, the ceremony will be presented by people called 'Fitzy and Wippa'. So that's classy.



I found an old magazine at the back of the cupboard. In it was an advertisement in the form of a travel diary. It was 'the story of two girls who set out to see how much they could get out of one day' fuelled by a glass of Berocca. What they got out of their one day was this:

At dawn, they were in the South Island of New Zealand, where they climbed a mountain. Following that, they flew to Australia, where they went to Uluru and rode camels in the afternoon. They then flew to Thailand, where they went to the night markets in Bangkok. Finally, they went to India to see the Taj Mahal, where the photos showed them standing in sunshine. They finish by writing: WE MADE IT IN ONE DAY.

I have to doubt that. I think they'd be struggling to do just the New Zealand and Australian legs in one day, unless they caught some fortuitously timed flights. Or does 'one day' mean more than twenty-four hours, given that they'd be crossing multiple time zones? Or is it just a reminder of a more innocent time (2004), when international travel didn't involve so much faffing about at the airport?

There is a show here, and I use the word 'show' loosely because it only goes for a minute, called Crimestoppers. Now it's all security camera footage, but it used to have terrible actors (so terrible I suspect they may not actually have been actors, but regular people chosen because they looked vaguely like the real people) re-enact recent crimes hoping to jog the memory of someone who may have seen something. I'm sure you've seen the same sort of thing, probably even called Crimestoppers. The Crimestoppers catchphrase used to be 'Help put the finger on crime!' and as the voiceover man said that, a giant finger would come down and accost a man dressed as a burglar, pinning him wriggling to the ground like an insect in a display case. If I ever find myself in charge of a television network I will make a list of my favourite small TV moments that will be played as filler when needed. The crimestopping finger will be one of them.

A few years ago I watched the remake of Psycho with Vince Vaughan. I mean, I didn't watch it with him, obviously. I watched it with him in it. But you knew that. If you've not seen it, it's not a re-imagining or an update or anything like that. It's a shot-by-shot re-enactment of the original. I had the strangest feeling watching it. No matter how rubbish a film is, I am normally happy to go along with the idea that the characters actually are people and they're doing these things, even if what they're doing is unbelievably stupid. But watching the Psycho remake felt like watching Crimestoppers because I knew it wasn't real.

Last night I watched the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes. It was... it was like watching Crimestoppers. I had the same feeling as when I watched the Psycho remake. Or when you see a film about a film being made, and the the film-within-the-film is ridiculous (and now Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, will duel with pistols!). This was like watching the film-within-a-film, in that you could tell it was a film. Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy it, because I did, sort of. I liked Jude Law in it, which is a first.

Also: a horse bicycle.

I've just seen Jamie Oliver on TV. He did his little bit, then signed off by saying, 'Take care. Mr O,' and saluted. Calling himself Mr O? Is that his thing now? I don't care for it.

Today my mother showed me her 2011 diary. It starts at January, then goes straight to April, May, June and July, before going back to April and proceeding in a more regular fashion through the rest of the months. She didn't realise until she went to write down a February appointment and couldn't find where to put it. She's going to get another, more conventional one.

Also, during the Christmas day Daisy family game of Scrabble, my mother put PRAD on the board and claimed it was 'the cowboy word for horse'. I challenged that because she has a history of making up words (she had earlier tried to play PLAPA), but it turned out she was right. Right about it being a slang word for horse, at any rate; the dictionary had nothing to say about whether it comes from cowboys. So if anyone ever makes a TV movie called A Very Daisy Christmas, that's the lesson that would be learnt at the end: prad is the cowboy word for horse. Which is also a handy word for Scrabble, so that's two lessons.