The Weather Doormat
A handsome coir mat with a small display in the corner, which tells you, as you come in, exactly what the weather was doing an hour ago.
The mat itself is excellent. Thick coir, bound edges, a discreet grey display set into one corner where the bristles thin out. Step on it and the display lights up with a full report: temperature, wind, cloud cover and rainfall, all measured with real instruments, all impeccably accurate, and all describing the weather of approximately one hour ago.
Nobody asked for this, because the customer is standing in the doorway with the weather still on their coat. They know what it was doing. They have, in the most literal available sense, just been out in it. The mat tells them anyway, in confident white numerals, and waits to be thanked.
The delay is not a fault. The manufacturer explains that live weather is available from any window and is therefore of no commercial interest, whereas the weather of an hour ago is genuinely unavailable elsewhere and can only be obtained from the mat.
One use has emerged that the makers did not anticipate. Households with teenagers report using it to determine whether somebody who arrived dry had in fact been outside during the downpour, which has made the mat, quietly, the most consulted instrument in several homes.
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