It is 267 days since I wrote about my battle with zips. They’re the bane of my life. They snap, they catch, they stick, they break. Occasionally, with the outlay of serious time, money and general faff, they can be fixed. Usually they can’t. And that means the rest of the garment, the luggage, the tent, the whatever, is rendered useless too. Not a day of those 267 has passed without me searching for an excuse to return to the subject of zips – getting a second rant about zips published within a calendar year being a big ask. Something big would have to happen for me to get away with it. And now something big has happened in the world of zips – really big.
But I’ll get to that in a minute. First, my latest zip outrage. I had a suitcase, quite a pricey one. Yes, you guessed it, the zip broke. Incandescent with rage, I looked up the manufacturer and, miraculously, found the receipt. Incredibly, I was two whole weeks away from the guarantee expiring. I dried my eyes and emailed them some details. Yes, they replied, we’ll sort it. But three days later I was howling in despair when a huge box arrived containing a brand new suitcase. On one hand, yes, great. But once again a zip had won the day, rendering useless an otherwise perfectly good suitcase. I can’t throw it away – it’s all just too absurd. I’ll keep it for ever, pointlessly. I refuse to submit to the tyranny of the zip. I must make a stand.
So, to the big news. After more than a century of hardly anything changing in zip design, the Japanese company YKK, which makes half the world’s zips, has found a way of improving things. They’re calling it the AiryString zipper. You’d think after all this time they’d come up with a better name than that. Anyway, what they’ve done is strip away the fabric tape that’s held zippers together for 100 years. Huge if true. Especially huge if I had a clue what it meant, or how it helped, or anything. I sent the details to a fabric expert friend of mine, who replied, “I think it’s genius and long overdue.” Marvellous. What a time to be alive.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
