Orange bills and climate control

I was worrying about my mobile phone bill today. I had an odd experience on Monday when I plugged my phone into my car kit and noticed that it was completely discharged with no power left in the battery at all - it never dips more than one or two bars as it usually gets recharged every time I go somewhere in the car. Thinking a little harder I rang to check how many of my free minutes I had left and found I had zero minutes and zero seconds left as at 12:24 am. Curiouser and curiouser.

The last call I had made was to Alicia just before seven o'clock on Sunday night, and I had a sudden panic that I had not terminated the call and somehow left it connected for five and a half hours before the battery had died. Fortunately this proved not to be the case, and checking my bill on line today showed that I was only a few minutes over my normal allowance. It doesn't explain the mystery of the dead battery though, unless a button had been left pushed down keeping the light on or something.

It was my first trip to Dudley in my new car today, and although it is much the same as the old one there are a couple of important differences. This one doesn't have a sunroof, but instead it has a climate control system which is fab. You dial in the temperature you want on your side of the car to the nearest half a degree, and the system works out what combination of fan speed, air conditioning and heating will achieve the desired result and goes about its duty automagically. There is even a 'clear screens' setting which puts everything into demisting the windscreen and melting any frost as quickly as possible before switching back to normal operations. Very nifty. I haven't dared touch the cruise control yet - I guess I will have to RTFM for that one ...