We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Man at B&Q"
saying something like:


Personally I'd buy a cheap'n'nasty pair of batteries for a phone, as you
can't be sure the charger is any good. *

Indeed. All the ones I've seen have specific warnings against leaving
them on thecradle all the time. The batteries get slowly poached.

Takes ages to kill them, though.
My DECT handsets needed new AAA cells last year, after about four years
on the original puny ones.