telephony and confectionary

I have been experimenting with the humongous electric cooker provided in the villa. Its vast, I'll have no worries if I have to respray my car (when I get one) I can bake the paint dry by driving into the oven! Seriously though, the oven is unusually big.

I did a couple of practice bakes and I think I've got the hang of fahrenheit now. Its kind of tricky translating gas mark four into fahrenheit, but since my shipment arrived, containing my cook books, I have a conversion table. I had got it slightly wrong on the first go and my crispy crust pizza was rather more crispy crust than pizza. In keeping with British school traditions I have baked cakes for my upcoming birthday. What a joy to be able to cook four full size (12" cake tin) cakes in the oven at once. Oops there goes the waistline.

Changing the subject to telephony, I have recieved my phone bill. This is a an entertaining work of fiction. Just as I did last time, I have gone through every item to check its veracity and ,just like last time, I have been overcharged by a third. How can they possibly expect to get away with charging me for a 58 minute call when the next call on the bill, for a further 48 minutes, commenced only four minutes after the first was supposed to have begun? I know the Magic Kingdom uses a Lunar calendar, but the phone company, in a spirit of concordant traditionalism no doubt, keeps lunatic timings. 106 minutes of calls in one hour? with only one phone line? and only one handset? that's pretty clever. Perhaps thats some of the eponymous Magic of the Kingdom at work.

strangely enough my current phone bill has no charges whatsoever beyond the 9th of last month, Oh! That would be the day I got my first phone bill and discovered its cheaper to call Mrs Gnomad in the Philippines using my UK cellphone than it is for me to call her on my TMK landline.

Hey ho, off to the bank. It being Ramadan the bank is open from 8pm to 1am.

G