Philly Barker and The Murder at Deverell Grange

A launch day diary

Philly’s latest adventure is live, so I thought I’d give you a rundown of what launch day looked like. If you’re expecting sequins and champagne, look away now.

4.20 am Alarm goes off

4.50 am. Arrive at Mooloolaba for daily beach walk. It’s grey and cloudy but warm and humid, as is normal for this time of the year.

6.20 am: We’re back from our walk and I go straight into an online exercise session with a friend. Each Thursday we do Body Project’s cardio/resistance workout on Youtube together.

7.20 am: Receive a happy release day message from my editor and remember that it is actually release day. Make a note to schedule some social media to mark the day.

7.30 am: We have a friend staying while we’re away, so I’ve decided, being between books, to give the whole house a deep clean. I love a good closet and pantry declutter, and there’s something so satisfying about tidying the Tupperware drawer—and then yelling the first time someone chucks a random lid in. I’ve been doing a room a day and today it’s the downstairs bathroom and kitchen’s turn, and I plan to clean the oven this morning. In preparation to run the self-cleaning function, I take the shelves out and soak them in the bath to make them easier to scrub.

8.10 am: I’m sort of doing time-restricted eating/ intermittent fasting, so no breakfast today. Leave house for dental appointment. (Side note: I’ve never had any work done besides a few fillings, but I’m ridiculously scared of the dentist. It dates back to a traumatic episode in Muswellbrook when I was a kid. Just saying).

9.30 am: I'm back from the dentist. I admitted to not flossing as often as she’d like, but I got a clean bill of health regardless. Phew. I changed into skungey cleaning clobber, switched the oven to pyro self-cleaning mode, and begin scrubbing the trays.

11.00 am: My back is killing me but the last of the trays is clean again. I leave these and head into the bathroom to begin cleaning that. A crash comes from the kitchen, as if all the trays have toppled to the floor. I return to the kitchen to find the trays still in place, but a pile of ash and shattered glass is on the floor at the base of the oven, and more pieces of ashy glass are where I’d been standing just a few seconds before. Because I’m supersensible (say nothing), I slip on my thongs (flip-flops, people) and pick my way through the glass to switch off the pyro function. The oven door is still locked while the interior cools down, but it appears as though the interior glass has shattered, and the force has been so great it’s fired out through the bottom of the oven door and across the kitchen. It’s at this point I realise that I actually had a lucky escape and if I hadn’t gone into the bathroom when I had, some of that glass (heated to 500C) would have ended up in my legs.

Now a tad shaky, I sit down and ring Grant.

11.30 am: Oven door is unlocked so I open it to survey the damage. As I’d suspected, the inner glass has shattered, and some of the fittings holding the remaining two sheets of tempered glass in place have also been sheared off.

While I wait for it to cool down enough to clean out, I ring Smeg (who helpfully tell me the oven is out of warranty) and a few appliance technicians. The consensus is that the door can be replaced, but it will take about eight weeks (with current workloads), and there’s probably damage to the seals and glass in the fan. Even if repaired, I don’t feel as though I can trust it again.

12 pm: Begin cleanup. The force of (what I’m now calling) the blast has meant the drawers below are also full of glass - which means every baking tin (and I have a lot) needs to be taken out and washed.

1.30 pm: My back is now really killing me. The kitchen bench is full of trays, but all glass is now off the floor. I decided I was hungry but couldn’t face making anything. Change clothes, grab keys and laptop and head to the local club for lunch.

Over a caesar salad with crumbed chicken and a glass of pinot grigio (neither of which are on my eating plan but which I think I deserve), I toast Philly Barker and write the introduction to a series of mini astrology books I’m releasing on Amazon in the next few months.

2.45 pm: Back home, I clean the downstairs bathroom, wash and dry the baking trays, mop the floors and find more glass. I fill the (clean) oven with the (clean) trays.

4.15 pm: I decide my back is too sore to remain upright any longer and lie down on the lounge to watch an episode of Antiques Roadtrip.

5.00 pm: Grant is home, so we head down to buy a new oven, which will (hopefully) be delivered and installed in the next week.

6.45 pm: It’s pork chops and salad (salad leaves and cherry tomatoes from the garden) for dinner, but Grant complains he needs some carbs but can’t cook his potato gems in the oven. I suggest he uses the air fryer. He says he doesn’t think that will work (he’s an air fryer resister - he says there has to be a reason he gets so many donated to the op shop). I roll my eyes and get the air fryer out from where I’d stashed it. We dust it down.

7.00 pm: I toast Philly Barker with my Peroni zero. Grant declares that the potato gems are lighter and crispier than when cooked in the oven and suggests we use the air fryer more often. I pretend to be surprised by this revelation.

9.00 pm: Just as I close my book (Death of an Outsider, by M.C. Beaton), I realise I neglected to do any social media for Philly. Make a mental note to rectify this tomorrow.