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FUTURE PROOF
Is perfect the same for one person as the next, asks Horrell. Turns out, it’s very unlikely...
ILLUSTRATION: PAUL RYDING
My microwave door doesn’t fit. I don’t mean it’s falling off and preventing my rewarming of yesterday’s sausage and mash, I just mean it’s three or four millimetres down on the left. It doesn’t sit properly in the kitchen cabinet it’s built into. The main oven, directly below, isn’t actually directly below. It’s a couple of mil to the right. And the fridge door is a little wonky relative to the drawers next to it. I can’t help noticing every single morning as I get the milk. It’ll be like that in your kitchen too. But don’t worry. You’re the only one in your household who cares, at least unless you share your life with someone else who’s spent too much time, as you have and as I have, idly examining the fit and finish of cars. What other sphere of activity manufactures with anything like the precision and consistency of the car industry? (And no, don’t hit me with microelectronics. The way light leaks around the tiles of my MacBook’s backlit keyboard tells me no one from Apple ever saw how precisely illuminated even a Fiat Panda’s climate controls are.)