Rewarding incident

What to do with "reward points"? (Nearly one-third go unredeemed.) 

My John Lewis vouchers get put away and forgotten - but the other day I came across some, and knew what to use them on: my stove-top espresso maker was showing signs of incontinence, probably because of the Forgetting The Water incident, which caused the rubber/plastic ring to buckle etc. Time for a new one, obviously.

The replacement (£40) is nicely - but alarmingly - shiny. Alien - and overbearing.

Could the ring be replaced? A quick internet search showed that replacement rings - er, gaskets - are available.

But how... unwilling to "risk" removing the battered, useless gasket, I took Old Faithful to Algerian Coffee Stores, who used the tip of scissors - the pointed implement nearest to hand - to gouge it out.

While the gouging was happening, the next customer also had brought his pot along - it had "just stopped working". It was twice the size of mine, and venerably patinated. And that was the problem - age had taken its toll - inside, the holes in the filter had clogged up; easy to replace both gasket and filter.

We both went home happy with our renewed coffee makers.

The holes in the filter were mostly still open - years of life left!

I put the shiny new bully back in its box, made sure the receipt was still in the bag, and will take it back to the shop asap.

As for the blue plastic colander in the photo ... that's a souvenir of a work outing to Lille - day trip on Eurostar for lunch with colleagues. Happy memories; it lived at Tony's for a good few years, and had to come home with me, replacing the green metal colander bought from JLewis when I first moved in to the flat. That went to a happy new home - colanders seem to last forever. I also have one that my grandmother brought to Canada in 1952, grey speckled enamel, somewhat chipped ... into which vegetables from the garden in Pitt Meadows had been gathered over the years (is that a metaphor??).

Everything has its story!