Sterling is red, insulation tape's blue...

... and I bought it and wired it, especially for you.

No, I haven't forgotten St. Consumerism's Day. I just thought I'd be unconventional in my choice of present for Amy.

A dozen red roses? Serenading from a balcony? Romantic evening punting? Cuddly toys and a £3.99 card?

Nope.

A Sterling ProCharge 20A charger! I bought it online (saving something in the region of £100 under what I'd budgeted) and tonight I installed it in the Magic Cupboard where the elec-tricks hide and cause problems. There was a lot of deliberation over the size and cost of charger to get. I wanted a 50 amp charger, but the generator hasn't got the guts for any charger that needsmore than 500 watts.

Annoyingly, the wattage of a charger is never advertised, seemingly. They'll tell you about the wonderful digital controller systems, the temperature compensation probes, the this, that, and the other, and give you pages of technical details- but never the one figure that you really, really needed. I ended up phoning up various companies and, in the end, plumped for the Sterling unit.

Be warned, though, it doesn't comewith battery cables, and you have to link any unused outputs together which is fiddly but possible. Just out of shot is the 35A fuse and fuseholder in the positive battery lead- so as not to damage the batteries if things go wrong.