How idle threats fail dismally in the mother-daughter relationship: talk to the door

It's as simple as this. I tell Precious Princess that if she doesn't clean up her dressing table I will drag its contents into a garbage bag and haul it outside into the big stinky bin.

This pic has not been tampered with. The drawers were dragged out on this angle when I entered the room to gather incriminating photographic evidence against my eldest daughter.

This is how a 19-year-old from a good family treats her own flesh and blood. How she pays back the mother, who's sacrificed her youth and sanity for her family.

I'm a neat person. Not fastidious. But I do dust occasionally. And I enjoy a certain amount of order in my life. So, where did I go wrong with daughter No 1?

Or will it all come good when she leaves home (please God?) and someone who has nothing at all to do with la famiglia cuts her down to size. Calls an ace an ace, a spade a spade. A mess a disgusting mess.

The really funny thing (always on reflection) is that when I point out the chaos that is her room (and I've only photographed one little bit of it) she looks at me like I'm the crazy one.

"Ok, ok, ok, ok. I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it." The usual response. Door slams in my face. I nag at door. At least door doesn't answer back.

Three weeks later, the dressing table doesn't look all that different. Though she has managed to shut the drawers.

PS: She doesn't know that I took this pic. That is my revenge.

The Italian movie I am Love is all show and no substance, and why making a melodrama is easier than writing a book

The other night my partner Spanner and I went to the cinema. We saw the Italian flick I am Love (lo sono l'amore), which came recommended by my cinephile mother. She described it as "beautiful to look at" and paying attention to every little detail.

And it was gorgeous. I was mesmerised from start to finish by the magnificence of it all. The locations of Milan and San Remo are stunning, and afterwards I wanted to rush from the cinema and hail a plane to Italy.

Another bonus was Tilda Swinton in the lead role. She's not your bog-standard beauty a la Naomi Watts, but has a luminosity, how do you say it - je ne sais quois - to her being. She is interesting to look at. Of course, the camera takes advantage of this and spends a huge amount of time focussed on her perfect skin and elegant, cream-textured features.

But what about the plot? I am Love is melodrama at its most hysterical and, I think, the director takes the easy way out at the end.

The story revolves around a disgustingly wealthy Italian family, whose patriarch bequeaths the family's textile business to his son and grandson. As the saga around the business unfolds, Tilda Swinton, who plays the son's wife, embarks on an affair with her son's friend, a chef.

The story builds slowly to a dramatic climax, with Tilda Swinton's character ultimately finding her true self.

What gets me is the lack of deep and meaningful dialogue. I know, I know. A director paints the scene for the audience. But so much is left unexplained.

And the big love scene is so cliched it's almost embarrassing. A full-on orchestra accompanies the wife and chef as a soft-focus camera pans over the couple making furious love in a sunny meadow (the grass looked scratchy to me - and I was worried about Tilda getting sunburnt and stung). Their lovemaking is intercut with shots of bees and creepy bugs crawling in and out of flowers. It's pretty funny.

My point is that you couldn't get away with this in a novel. Script writing for the cinema allows the writer to take way more liberties than an author. If it looks good on the screen, you'll forgive the writer and director for other flaws in the story.

And better still if it's Italian. Italians get away with blue murder, just because they're Italian. I mean, only the Italians would have the audicity to call a film I am Love. After all, they reckon they invented 'amore'.

A more appropriate title might be I am Wank. Beautiful to look at but lacking in substance.

The humourless hero with bad table manners

During the numerous and lengthy ad breaks in MasterChef Australia I have time to ponder the qualities I want in the hero in the book I'm writing and what I don't want.

Using MasterChef as a research tool I've learnt I don't want my hero to be like one of the three judges, chef George Calombaris.

For a start, he has an ego the size of a small African country.

He also eats like a pig - this has been well documented so I won't go into detail here, except that he holds his fork and knife like a four-year-old, shovels in the food and chews like a toothless hobo.

But the worst thing about GC is he's humourless.

When a situation is funny, Georgie Porgie Puddin' and Pie doesn't crack a smile. I don't think he knows how to.

The show has its lighter moments, like tonight when four of the contestants had disastrous results with Adriano Zumbo's amazing macaron tree recipe. I must digress - these macarons are bright pink (with a beetroot and raspberry filling) and purple (with a kalamata olive and bergamot filling).

The contestants macarons were variously squished and cracked and couldn't match Zumbo's masterpiece. But rather than see the humour in their less than perfect results as the other judges did - including Zumbo - George remained poker-faced.

One day I might have a place for George as a minor character in a book, but never as the hero.

Unless he loses the attitude. And learns to eat properly.

Writing in June is over and I didn't make the word count but I've got the lowdown on MasterChef

I could have told me so. When I committed to the *RWA's June writing challenge I didn't expect to reach my 30,000-word goal.

I'm pleased I managed to write almost 11,000 words considering I work, have needy children, a dog, my partner Spanner (he takes some looking after) and a house to keep in order.

Then there's the other commitments, like MasterChef. I have to have something to talk about with my friends.

Talking of MasterChef, I was walking through the city the other day around lunchtime when I heard this office guy say to his office mates, "Yeah, it just wasn't fair to put them all in a shed in the howling wind and expect them to produce **CWA standard cakes and scones. I mean, how can you keep the oven temperature constant in those conditions?"

See what I mean? It's important to watch MasterChef in order to hold a conversation with every other Australian.

At our local organic food market last weekend (it's not really organic, but what a drawcard) I bumped into a woman whose daughter used to be in the same swim squad as Precious Princess.

I haven't seen this woman for at least two years. Yet, we chatted for half-an-hour about, you guessed it, MasterChef. The conversation grew animated as we discussed who we thought would win, the degree of recipe difficulty in this series compared to the last, the contestants we love and those we do not like at all. And so on and so forth.

It's amazing to think that around 2 million Australians sit down to watch this show, which is on the telly every night except Saturday.

I blame MasterChef for my low word count, but I thank it for giving me something in common with my fellow country men and women.

It's a shame my oven is bung (the fuse went again) and Spanner doesn't want to outlay the money for a new one.

How can one live the MasterChef dream in such a hostile environment?

Acronyms explained:

*RWA = Romance Writers of Australia

**CWA = Country Women's Association