Writers can recoup their losses.

Years ago when my washing machine broke down there was a great guy who would come and fix it. He was kindly and chatty and when I worried about the cost of buying a new machine he would advise me to divide the purchase price by the months/years of service it gave me.On looking back it was a therapeutic way of looking at the problem.  Especially when you thought of the number of washes over time this indispensable machine gave a household of six. Even more so today when everyone is so conscious of hygiene and have got into the habit of changing practically every item every day and throwing it into the washing machine. One son of mine as a student used to wash his jeans every  single night because of the smell of smoke clinging to them,  and he didn't smoke himself. Anyway to return to the subject of the washing machine, not the original one but a newer model when it broke down, a new service man called to the house and strangely after his visit something else went wrong with the machine and he had to come again, maybe the on/off switch was no longer working, and then it was a non-functioning  programmer. Each time I had to call him out to put it right and the cost was mounting.. He was not from Ireland and he spoke rather pessimistically about my seven year old machine gloomily  forecasting that the drum was likely to give trouble next and was an expensive item to replace; he suggested if it did he could get me a reconditioned one at a very reasonable price.  Next the machine sprang a leak, flooding the kitchen floor, but this time a different serviceman arrived and to my  relief the trouble turned out to be merely a sock stuck in the hose. Simple and inexpensive to put right.

This new serviceman was friendly and chatty like my old friend in the early days and I was moved to tell him of his predecessor who seemed to have jinxed my machine with his woeful predictions. Lo and behold, it turned out the man was a conman and the company had traps set for him, using brand new washing machines, and before long caught him in the act. But not before he had been able to buy himself a new house and a new car , it was a very lucrative business he had found himself in

 Having left the experience fermenting in the haybox of my mind for some years I eventually wrote a story called Menomadness entering it for the Image/Oil of Ulay Short Story Competition and the prize money more than compensated for what I had been cheated out of. Indeed, I could have bought a couple of new washing machines with it. As they say it's not the experience itself but what you learn from it that counts and by putting my facility with words to good use, I more than recouped my losses.