Pressure Cooker Traumas

I had almost forgotten that I have at least two excuses for not being a good cook, or at least for being reluctant to use a 'new-fangled device' like a pressure-cooker.
TRAUMA ONE
My father brought the first pressure-cooker home from his travels - probably from either Canada or the US. I might have been around twelve years old at the time, so we are talking about the late 1940's.

I used occasionally stay with my Grandmother if she was alone in the house in her wheelchair, and around this time she rewarded me by giving me the largest apple that grew on the  great Bramley tree outside the dining room window of her home in Ferguson Road.
When I brought it home, my mother suggested that she might wrap it in greaseproof paper, and then 'steam' it when she was cooking the potatoes for the dinner.
I could smell the apple and my mouth watered, as the steam hissed and spluttered through the valve in the lid of the cooker - the lid that was controlled by the little 'safety plug' you can see in the images.

In due course, the lid was removed - and oh the dismay and disappointment - clearly the apple had exploded inside the cooker, and was now inextricably mixed with the potatoes which were also pulped by the 'explosion'!
The hunger of it - now I wonder whether the little valve blew - who knows!

TRAUMA TWO
Many years later, around 1970, the year we moved to Tallaght, two neighbours had quite an adventure which could have been dangerous if it hadn't been so humourous. Neighbour A was being shown how to make Christmas pudding by neighbour B. Two small bowls were used, so there was room for both in the pressure cooker - a newer version than mine, and known as a 'Hi-dome', if I remember correctly.
The cooker was put on the gas, and the two women proceeded to clear away the work-space, watched by A's child.
The pressure built up in the cooker as it always did and the gas was lowered as usual. However, unbeknownst to the two women, the little valve became blocked as the upper pudding rose in the course of being cooked.
Without any warning, the valve gave way, releasing a stream of semi-liquid pudding through the tiny outlets normally used by the steam. The jets of pudding had the effect of sending the cooker into a spin, spraying pudding on all four walls of the room.
Luckily neighbour B was wearing spectacles and these also got sprayed.
The little child was unhurt, but amazed by the sight, remarked that neighbour B looked like a currant bun.

Surely, all this means that there is every excuse for me not wanting to take the risk of dealing with such an unpredictable monster - once might be chance - but twice was surely an omen (well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it, the way the apple and the pudding stuck to the cooker!)
PS
The plug in the images was bought in Roches Stores, and paid for in Punts - the Irish currency in use between the advent of 'decimal currency' in the 1971 and Ireland joining the Euro in the 1999.