I dragged myself out of bed this morning looking like something just escaped from a Matrix pod.

After 4 days of vegetating in the cot feeling sorry for myself and cursing the injuries sustained in my reckless youth, I had an insatiable hunger for coconuts. Why coconuts? I have no bloody idea.

Coconuts have antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal properties which is all very well, and I have learned that cravings have a basis in some element missing from my diet, but I have never craved for a bit of coconut before.

I’ve been told that people who eat a lot of coconuts don’t suffer from many of the modern diseases of western nations. Yeah, but maybe they don’t hit the grog like we do. Or binge out on takeaway. Or sit for 3 hours in a traffic jam breathing deeply of carbon monoxide. Or damage themselves in their wilder, younger days like I did.

Where do you get a coconut from anyway? Maybe my subconscious is telling me to get away to some tropical island and laze about on golden sands. Sounds like a better idea than to go searching for coconuts.

I think I know the origins of the savage ban on vegemite to the Olympic competitors from Australia. It’s payback for the Commonwealth Games. Payback for those missing athletes.

You heard about the missing athletes of course. Eleven of them. All went missing from their cozy little cabins in the new Commonwealth Games Athletics Village in Melbourne in March of 2006.

Were these eleven fine young specimens of humankind murdered while they slept and their bodies dragged away to unmarked graves? What happened? A satanic cult? Were they victims of secret government matter-transformer/ transmitter/ transposer experiments?

My money is on Alien Abductions.

People from Sierra Leone are particularly prone to alien abductions. Especially the athletes. Only six years ago 70% of the Sierra Leone team - 21 of the total 30 - vanished during the Manchester Commonwealth Games.

But wait, there’s more — Tanzanian boxer Omari Idd Kimweri, and Bangladeshi 400m runner Mohammad Tawhidul Islam, also vanished overnight from their beds. Perhaps in the dark they were mistaken for Sierra Leone athletes.

Now it’s payback time for Australia,

The Chinese Olympics committee may have banned athletes bringing their own chow into the Olympic village, but the Americans are bringing in tonnes of food, which they will eat at a local university outside the Olympic Park.

Australian athletes are meanwhile suffering from vegemite withdrawal and will in all probability come last in their events.

China says the ban is in place to minimise the risk of illegal substances being used but let’s be serious here …it’s obviously about protecting the concessions and contracts of Olympics vendors.

There is no prize for guessing the name of the food sponsor. It starts with Mc and ends with Donalds.

Incredibly, the Chinese Government, not content with making a visit to China substantially more complex and unappealing, have placed a ban on Vegemite!

Not just vegemite of course, but muesli bars, weetbix and protein shakes intended for the consumption of our delicately strung sportsmen and women.

Can you believe this? Our athletes will be forced to eat only local food! Now, while we’re all used to fried rice and blackbean sauce, how can anyone be expected to perform without vegemite in the morning?

As soon as I heard the dreadful news that no food shipments could enter Chinese waters I sprang into action. I immediately phoned up my ladies from the local Red Hat branch.

We are, as you read this, packing food parcels to send to individual athletes. My neighbour has a stockpile of knitted vests and I have heaps of Anzac biscuits left from last week, they can go in too. Then we pack the bottom of the parcel with jars of vegemite (maybe a bottle of pine o cleen in case of accidents brought on by 5 spice duck).

They picked on the wrong people here. We will fight anyone for our right to vegemite on toast.

Bring it on!!!!!

What can resist applications of bio washing flakes, soda crystals, grease-stripper, scouring powder, toothpaste, drain cleaner and pure unadulterated bleach? The stains on plastic garden chairs of course.

I scrubbed with steel wool. I scraped with a knife. I spent two fruitless hours and the stains wouldn’t shift.

What are these chairs made from? Some technology from the space project? A plastic originally developed to weather cosmic radiation and the odd meteor shower of interplanetary space? It’s impossible to remove the stains from them.

Things were easier in the old days when garden furniture was made of wrought iron which merely rusted and lent an elegant patina to the patio. Only the men went into the backyards then, we ladies talked in the kitchen while wrapping up dozens of loaves of garlic bread.

Sometimes I miss those simpler days when cleaning the outdoor area was a matter of turning on the hose, but then I remember shag pile carpet, fondue sets and Tupperware Parties. And quickly try to forget.