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Danger of Rechargable Batteries

Ooow, busy day... First I wrote the first draft of a 1,500 shorty for Riverside Writers' latest project which is on the theme of "the punch bowl"--so my tale of an office party is called simply Punch.

Next, the bedraggled hedge in our (freezing cold and distinctly soggy) front garden was returned to order with our strimmer. As I was working, our neighbour drove up in her car so I asked if she minded if I step into her front garden so I could trim both sides of the shared hedge level. She readily agreed. It looked a mess left uneven, so I did it for my own benefit. I left the trimmings strewn on her lawn. She and her two adult sons do have complete sets of fully functioning limbs, after all. *chuckles*

Then I tackled stray dust bunnies under the dressing table, and retrieved the remains of the shredded paper bag which Emily had dismantled under our bed. I even used the stinky "lemon" furniture polish which smells like how marmalade on burned toast tastes.

After that, I finished retyping School, all 5,070 words of it. I'll tweak it to lose the stray 70 before I'm done. This one's a Sci-Fi/Fantasy tale of student pranks and DNA experiments.

Richard went into the kitchen to make a hot drink, only to notice that the tiny red light had gone off on his battery recharger. He'd only plugged it in two or three hours earlier, and it's a model which is supposed to be left to recharge overnight.  When he unplugged it, he found one side of the recharger was very hot. Closer inspection revealed that the device was badly scorched on one side, so much so that the plastic casing had begun to melt. Thankfully, this fault was spotted before we retired for the night, otherwise you could be reading about this in a newspaper.

This recharger was almost new; it had been used exactly three times. The batteries were the right ones to use with it. It hadn't been dropped; it didn't look damaged when he plugged it in.

The moral of the story, then, is to remember not to believe in the safety of even familiar gadgets.

And now it's time to peel spuds for dinner. Au revoir!

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