In the meantime, I've been having lots of fun improving the 'keeping dry' qualites of my £15 long waterproof coat. When purchased the flap over the long front zip was secured by 3 x 1.5" strips of Velcro. This soon wore out and lost all of its grip. I took the Velcro strips off and replaced them with sew-on magnets (which worked well) but then, upon reading the warning leaflet that came with them about possible damage to mobile phones I decided to try large press studs instead.
I dropped into a local haberdashery shop and the lady there found me some large ones. I then spent yesterday afternoon (it was raining hard) sewing them on. They work well too. My wife came back from visiting her mother and was AMAZED that I had actually used a needle and thread! I did tell her I looked up how to do it first on YouTube. So as a reward she gave me a large triangle of coffee and walnut cake.