Above you see two coffee pots , second from the left is my original Espresso Coffee Maker , it is, I think about forty years old and has served me well.
It is indeed an espresso machine, despite the lack of shiny chrome , hissing steam valves or strange plastic capsules.
It is officially a six cup machine and it does indeed produce six miniscule thimblefuls of coffee , for me, first thing each morning, it produces one large comforting bowl- although I do confess that I don’t make this at full strength and I do add a little milk to the brew.
As I said it has served me well cince sometime early in the 1970’s , it has had a few changes of internal filters and suffered for a while when someone attempted to make coffee in it without putting water in the bottom tank.
(By about six weeks the taste of burnt coffee had completely disappeared)
The final straw happened when its bakelite handle seccumbed to old age and proved impossible to replace.

Since then we have been quietly searching for a replacement.

Now you will notice that the pot is made of aluminium, its kind have been made of aluminium for years , nowadays – we discovered as we searched for a replacement – they are made of stainless steel or some sort of coloured metal.

We felt that , as they are such a basic tool of French living that somewhere , in a village Quincaillerie * we would find one in aluminium.
And so it proved.
Two days ago we found one in the small village of Quillan in the Pyrenees-Oriental.
It is pictured with its predecessor above , byond a few very minor adjustments it is identical to the original. You can now wriggle the safety valve about to make sure it is not clogged by calcium and, of course being aluminium it will start its life being shiny until it soon reverts to matt grey.

For those of you who still harbour doubts about the relationship between that metal and Alzheimer’s , modern medical research would indicate that one cup of tea has more aluminium in it than we could possibly ingest from a year of boiling water in a pot made of this metal.

This morning Espresso Pot Mark two made me a bowl of perfect coffee.

* For the nerds among you who ( like myself) wondered where the French got the word quincaillerie a short consult with my Larousse , Grand Dictionnaire Étymologique , (but of course I have bought one ) the answer , most interestingly is that the shop originally sold iron ware and its name came , onomatopoeically , from the clanking (French clinquant) sounds of its wares.