While having breakfast this morning I happened to glance across the room at our new telephone.  We recently bought a set of cordless phones with some wedding money, and have set one up downstairs in the lounge and the other in the office upstairs.  They look pretty neat.  Except that the one downstairs appeared to be switched off.  Odd, I thought, I don’t remember switching it off.  Upon closer inspection I discovered that not only was it very definitely off but it wouldn’t switch on again either.  A distinctly iffy smell was detectable too, and when I took the cover off the back to get to the batteries I discovered that one of the rechargeable AAA batteries had exploded.  Not good. (more…)