What is it with zips? Ask someone who knows about these things how to fix the zip on your coat, and they’ll pull a licked lemon of a face. Gravely, a head will be shaken. Very difficult, if not impossible. But why, you demand. It just is, you are told.
Early in the last decade, when I had more money than sense, I bought an absurdly expensive coat by mistake. I was at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 flying somewhere to cover a Champions League football match for ITV. Making my way to the gate, which was showing last call, I realised I hadn’t brought a coat. I think it was Basel we were off to, in late autumn. I’d need a coat.