Friday the Thirteenth.

I knew it was all going far too well. Friday is a one-man shift, usually done at full panic stations but this one went smoothly. I was finished with time to spare. Then I found Teacher’s at £18 a litre in Tesco. The rain stayed off for me to get to work and was no more than a misty drizzle on the way home. It didn’t even matter on the way home since, with no work tomorrow, every item of uniform went in the wash tonight. It really didn’t matter if I’d been drenched, although it was nice not to be.

There was (and still is) bacon and cold roast chicken in the fridge. Also eggs. Crisply grilled bacon and chicken bits in a chilli-spiced omelette sounded just the thing, so I opened the grill and…

…the glass panel on the oven door (above the grill) detached itself, fell into the grill pan I was holding and smashed into a million bits. It went everywhere. Fortunately it was safety glass, misnamed when the ‘safety’ glass is evidently not safely attached to the damn door, but at least there were no shards.

It’s an old oven. I had often wondered what was holding that glass panel in place. Not very much, as it turned out. To get a replacement glass panel for a roughly 14-year-old oven would cost £200! To get an entirely new double fitted oven would cost under £300. I think it is time for a new oven. I would never trust any new glass panel anyway, I want one that is fitted into the door, not stuck onto the front of it.

Heating and cooling over more than a decade would have made that panel expand and contract and gradually cracked the glue holding it in place. I suppose it was bound to happen. It’s just coincidence that it happened on Friday 13th with a full moon.

Or… is it?

The same day that I found my first lot of radishes ready to lift and discovered that the snails had found they were ready to eat the night before. They don’t eat just one, oh no. They browse along the row taking a bite out of each. Now I have to cut out snail-bites. Fortunately the radishes are big enough to endure the loss but even so, the snails must die.

Tomorrow the annual Mollusc Wars begin in earnest, as soon as I have ordered a new oven. I have already tackled the gooseberry sawfly with a liberal application of Chemical Death (the kind that won’t kill me when I eat the gooseberries) and the red lily beetles with some Serious Chemical Death (have to do that before the flowers open so the bees don’t get it too. I like bees, they look cute and cuddly but carry a toxic spike).

For the snails, I think a sleepless night with my .22 air pistol is in order. Let’s see the buggers get immune to those kind of pellets. Have to do it soon – if Oily Al is determined to register all airguns including my ‘only manages to kill a mollusc’ Maxima, that one will be going away too.

Then I’ll get the little buggers with my crossbow. Snail kebab time. I have two pistol crossbows that would be ideal for the job rather than getting the big one out.

Note that I am posting after midnight. The oven door experience convinced me to leave the ‘net alone until the deadly day had passed.

I think it’s safe to come out now. I’ll save the cooking for tomorrow, cold chicken sandwiches are the only safe option for tonight.

Update – here is the current state of the oven. If it looks a bit shaky, so am I.

And yes, it is clean apart from the bits of glass. It’s what I do now.