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Very sad to hear of the sudden death of Kay Mellor who was an inspirational, groundbreaking and brilliant writer and a fantastic guest on the RHLSTP tour in 2019. You can listen to it here.
https://play.acast.com/s/rhlstp/rhlstpspecial-kaymellor. It couldn’t have been more contrasting with Rob Rouse trying to light my farts in the other show of the night!
I bought a coffee machine in January 2018 some 52 months ago. It was pretty expensive. Over £1000. At the time I wondered if that it might be an indulgence too far. But I like coffee and with the greatest of respect to the teashop in our village, the nearest decent espresso based coffee is at least a couple of miles away. Possibly five, And if I had to drive that far every time I wanted a coffee I would waste a lot of time and fuel. I understand that industrial vats of instant coffee are probably available that would make you a coffee for a few pence, but I don’t like instant coffee and I do like the freshly ground coffee that this machine can provide. I can do with a cafetière just about, but in the morning I would like a nice cappuccino or an espresso and I thought it was worth the cost to make sure that was possible, at some quality.
Over four years on the machine started playing up a bit and I sent it off to get checked up and serviced. It’s in quite good shape but needs a new pump filter. But the coffee machine engineer sent me a report that he had downloaded from my machine telling me how many coffees it has made. It is 8219 coffees. That’s a lot of coffee. It’s 158 coffees a month! It’s 5 coffees a day. Which isn’t that many really, especially as I haven’t drunk them all. But I reckon I’ve drunk 75% of them. And we haven’t been at home every single day.
It’s about 1460 days and 5 coffees a day. Let’s say a coffee in a cafe cost £2 (which it doesn’t, it’s more likely 3 or more but it makes the sums easier). £10 a day. £14600 in total. So having this machine has saved me over £10,000. Even allowing for the price of coffee (I buy in bulk and get through one bag of beans a month, costing approx £14) - that’s about £728 worth of coffee. And let's say the milk has cost the same (though a lot of those coffees were black). Maybe I’ve spent a few hundred pounds on filters and cleaning tablets and stuff too and the service/repair is costing me about £250. It’s still a pretty good saving. I should drink 10 coffees a day. Think of the money I’ll be making then. This machine could make me a millionaire.
The upshot of all this is that I have realised that buying this machine was definitely the right decision. I have wasted plenty of money on useless tech in my life, but I needn’t have worried about this choice.
I wonder what the young me would make of it all. I used to run past the coffee shop on Weston Super Mare’s main shopping street, holding my nose as I couldn’t abide the bitter smell of coffee in the air. And if you’d given that lad a thousand pounds he would have bought every possible bit of Subbuteo stuff from Youngsters and then spent the rest on sweets.
The way things are going I will probably have to give up coffee, just like I am giving up on all the things I most liked, but for now I will enjoy my three or four coffees a day. Just not after two pm. If I want to sleep that night.
I think though, what I was most impressed with, was the fact that my coffee machine had been keeping track and that it was possible to know how many cups it had served. Machines may not yet be sentient, but that kind of attention to detail can't mean they're far off from becoming so.
The snooker balls roll onwards. Tonight’s frame was another crucial one in the tournament. To find out who won and what the football scores were at 8.03pm,
watch here or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
