The heat in Phoenix is something so omniprescent that you can’t fight it, and the best defence is running away. Last weekend, we did just that, having been invited by friends to visit their compound (a word which, I will admit, triggered thoughts of something Branch Davidian) a couple of hours drive North of Phoenix. North = higher = cooler – since moving here, I’ve become somewhat familiar with things like the “dry adiabatic lapse rate” which, fact fans, is the way rising air cools at about 3C per 1000 feet.

In Arizona, this translates to a migration to higher ground at every opportunity, and we had picked a good weekend for it, as the temperature in Phoenix reached 44C on Saturday. This trip, however, ended up visiting ground a little higher than even we would have liked. We’d not been to visit our friends’ country mansion before, so had received detailed and beautifully-drawn instructions – unfortunately, they were also fatally-flawed, in that they confused Highway 89 with 89A. “You tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the even-higher road…”

Because Chris had a pinched nerve in her neck, I was the driver on this leg, and Chris’s role was largely dealing with Robert. He is clearly an urban boy, and pretty much as soon as we left Phoenix, the steady whining began coming from the back seat: in addition to the usual bleats of “Are we there yet?” and “Is it much further?”, he was also suffering a constant fear of us running out of petrol, even though the tank never dipped below a quarter-full. Passing a significant number of cars, apparently stalled by the side of the road, didn’t improve matters.

Pretty much as soon as we made the fateful turn onto Highway 89A, we realised something was wrong. This road had curves on it, something I hadn’t seen in the previous six months driving round Phoenix. I struggled to remember what you had to do to go round them…something involving the steering wheel, wasn’t it? And the road also continued to climb: three thousand, four thousand feet up, and still no sign of the promised turning which would take us to Shangri-La.

If it had been daylight, the views would no doubt have been delightful and impressive; as it was, it was probably a good thing that the darkness prevented us from seeing the precipitous drop on the other side of the guard-rail. Chris, on the passenger side, was getting up close and personal with the chasm below us, and I began to wonder if she’d taken Nietzche’s comment about gazing into the abyss to heart. She was certainly brooding in an appropriately silent manner, but might just have been petrified with fear – Chris prefers her roads straight, three lanes in each direction, and possessing a central reservation between you and any oncoming juggernauts.

Me, I was actually enjoying it. In the North of Scotland, where I learned to drive, even the A-class roads are rarely more than one lane each way, curves go with the territory, and you also have to dodge the world’s dumbest creatures, sheep. Having all but drifted off to sleep on the freeway, I was somewhat revelling in 10 m.p.h. hairpins. I remember thinking that the distances on the road signs must have been both as the crow flies and vertically. It may not be the best mindset, but I felt like I was playing an incredibly realistic video game, albeit with one life left, no saves and no continues.

It was thus with a slight sense of regret that I went over the brow of the mountain, at around 7,500 feet, and we fell down the other side, albeit not quite literally. We passed through the almost-deserted town of Jerome, and headed for Cottonwood where we drove into the first hotel we found. Never has a Quality Inn been more welcome. I used a tyre lever and gently pried Chris’s fingers free from the dashboard, where they’d been gouging grooves for the past twenty miles.

On the bright side, when we did finally reach our destination on Saturday, it made the relaxation all the more worthwhile…

On the whole, I’m beginning to get settled into this parenting lark. For one thing, it allows you to play unlimited amounts of computer games, under the guise of “bonding” – even if you do have to pretend to be no good, and get your ass severely kicked, so as to promote their feelings of self-esteem. At least, that’s my excuse, Robert, and I’m sticking to it. But it’s not all Dead or Alive 2. Saturday was Emily’s dance recital; not in itself a bad thing, since she’s a good dancer (and I will stab a steak-knife into the eye of anyone who says differently – I believe this is also part of parental responsibilities), it was the sixty or so routines she wasn’t appearing in that were the problem.

We have had differences with the dance school before, since they seem to be largely a machine designed for separating us from all our wordly goods. Apart from the fees for the dance class itself, there are the shoes, the pom-poms and the costumes – which will be worn for the recital and then never again – all of these, specially made and horrifically expensive. We were seriously contemplating selling Emily’s used leotard on Ebay to defray the costs. And if that wasn’t enough, there were the tickets: eight dollars a pop, not only for us, but friends and family too.

Because she had to be there an hour before kick-off (or whatever the dance equivalent is: tap-off, perhaps), so did we, so we snagged an entire row of seats for us and the relations, fighting off the steadily more frenzied attempts of the other participants to evict us. The lights went down, and still they were nowhere in sight: finally, just as I was about to sneak out myself, the tidal-wave broke and they turned up. Unfortunately, by this point, they’d missed Emily’s first spot: all seventy-five seconds of it.

The theme was Hooray for Hollywood, and so I was looking forward to dance routines based around Basic Instinct perhaps, or Schindler’s List, but no such luck. About the closest we got was The Matrix, and that had a complete lack of PVC, bullets or running up of walls. The Charlie’s Angels one was pretty good, however, though Chris reckoned a lot of the dancers’ future careers were more likely to be gyrating on tables, rather than waiting on them. At the other end of the spectrum were the Very Small Children, bless their little hearts. Barely out of nappies, there always seemed to be one dancing to the beat of a different drum, though the result was merely to make the entire audience go “Ahhhh” and start lactating.

But there is a limit beyond which even waiting for someone to fall off the stage will pall – and after Emily’s other routine (nearer number 50 than 30 – another 75 seconds or so, though very impressive with it. See my earlier remarks about steak-knives), we gradually adopted a kind of artistic rigor mortis, interrupted sporadically by clapping. You enter a twilight zone where the dumbest thing would trigger us off into peals of hysterical laughter: those of us that were left, anyway.

For the realisation that there were fifteen Emily-free routines to go triggered a lemming-like response from our row. They’d seen her dance; what more did we want from them? “The kids are acting up,” they said. We wished fervently for more kids of our own to provide such an escape excuse, and credit must be given to Chris’s brother Leo, for being the only one to make it all the way to the end beside us. If it hadn’t been my daughter, I’d have gone to the bathroom during the interval, and kept on running [suddenly, it makes sense why they chose a high-school in the middle of the desert – to prevent escapees…]

The applause for the finale was enthusiastic and brief. We picked up our little darling, and headed off for dinner at her favourite restaurant. I never want to see a small child again; perhaps they could incorporate dance recitals into aversion therapy for paedophiles? When all is said and done, I think that next year, we’ll encourage Emily to take up a slightly cheaper pastime – something like polo, or racing powerboats.

If anyone had said to me five years ago that I would be packing beads most evenings for a living, I would have laughed, looked at them very strangely and politely suggested an increase in medication. But this is now the very situation in which I find myself, and not only that, I am probably working harder than at any time since I graduated university.

On Monday morning, I started work just after 8am, with the acknowledgements of the Ebay auctions which had finished overnight. With only a break for dinner, I finished my day’s work at some time after midnight, when the last parcel of the day was sealed, addressed and ready to go into the post. Yet, despite the outward appearance of slave labour, why do I remain intensely happy, and why does the prospect of ever going back to HSBC fill me with terror?

The major difference is certainly in working for yourself, which means that you get to see the benefits of your efforts. Back in HSBC, if you got a job finished quickly and efficiently…you just got given something else to do, which is scarcely an incentive. You got paid, not for the effort, but for merely turning up, and so the general rule of thumb was to do the absolute minimum possible to get through the day. And that wasn’t very much – doing nothing didn’t seem to be grounds for getting fired, you had to be actively and dangerously incompentent for that.

Now, my situation is different. If I don’t do the Ebay ads, no-one else will. Well, Chris would, but as she is currently got her own nightmarish battle against the force of darkness (a.k.a. a day job) to deal with, it seems only fair that I take on my share of responsibilities. Conversely, no-one else can take credit for what we do, such as our having more than tripled hits to the site in the past five months; a combination of Chris’s good customer service and my judicious (and, so far, entirely cost-free!) advertising. We do stuff, we get the benefit – classic carrot/stick behaviour, basic capitalism at work, unimpeded by steering committees made up of middle management.

It is indescribably pleasant being your own boss. No more need to cower in fear, minimising your windows because you are sitting outside the God-Emperor’s office. No more need to censor bad words from your email. And I can go to the fridge and have a beer whenever I want one. Not that I do…during office hours anyway. 🙂 Plus I get to hug my co-employee, though admittedly, this is something which I never really wanted to do back at HSBC anyway.

Seeing trashcity.com grow has been a source of immense pride and joy, to the extent where I now pour over graphs of visitors there far more than the orphan child which is this web site. I admit that keeping here going has taken a bit of a back seat recently, due to a sheer lack of time (both movies reviewed this week ended up being watched in multiple installments, fitted round the more financially-essential work), but it is to be hoped, if sales continue to go well, that Chris will be assisting me during the day, and we’ll reclaim our evenings.

Till then, an hour or two of gentle bead-packing is hardly a chore, since it also works as quality time with my one true love. My fear – and this is one that has me waking up screaming in the middle of the night – is that it can’t last, that the bottom is about to fall out of the bottom of the bead market, and that I’ll have to find myself a McJob to make ends meet. After less than six months away from the world of bosses, Internet nannies and inter-deparmental memoranda, it’s a prospect that I find myself more than slightly unwilling to face!

One of the major sources of customers for TC is Ebay. Every week, we put 3-400 auctions up there, which not only bring in a good amount of cash, they also introduce a lot of potential clients to the awesome stock of beading supplies which is www.trashcity.com. This is because each of our auctions have a link to our website, allowing the users to see other items in which they might be interested, and assure themselves that we are not some dodgy fly-by-night operation. [Or at the very least, some dodgy fly-by-night operation with a spiffy web site] This seems natural and fair, and aids both us and our customers.

Ebay have, however, wised up, realising that anyone leaving their site might lead to them not getting their thirty pieces of silver, since they could – gasp! – buy things elsewhere! Naturally, this can’t be permitted. So, as of the end of the month, they will no longer allow us to link from items to external sites, although linking to Ebay subsidiaries such as half.com is still permitted! And – what a surprise – Ebay will shortly be offering their own storefronts to users; at a price, of course. Who will buy my lovely fresh air?!

Needless to say, this will make for a lot of work, since all of our auctions have to be altered, one at a time, to remove the offending link. Or at least, revise it, since Ebay – in what seems like a sop to defuse the loud protests from their users – will still continue sellers to link to their sites from the “About Me” page which each user has. Needless to say, this loophole allows a column of tanks to tap-dance their way through, and so our About Me page is virtually a clone of our home page at trashcity.com.

It remains to be seen how long Ebay will permit anything that hints at the possible existence of other places to buy and sell goods. They already seem to be realising the possibilities, and are imposing restrictions on the ‘About Me’ page. These are, however, making things even more complex, witness this quote on a discussion board from one Ebay staff member:

“For instance, you can say “click here to visit my website” from the About Me (not the Listing Page), but you can’t say “To view my other jewelry, please click here to visit my website.”“

The reasoning by which one is entirely permitted, yet the other is completely unacceptable, is unclear to me, but would appear to be as tortuous as a pretzel specially baked for a convention of contortionists.

Ebay make the legal claim to be no more than an intermediary, in much the same way as a newspaper takes no responsibility for trades done through its classified ads. I suspect this position cannot remain tenable, in the face of a continuing welter of restrictions and regulations: you can’t advertise this way, you can’t sell this product at all. A perfect example of the latter is their all-but-complete ban on a number of things which came into effect yesterday, including serial-killer items and Third Reich memorabilia. I couldn’t give a damn about sad Manson- or Gein-worshipping geeks, or a bunch of historo-retards who’ve not realised who won World War II – but it’s still pretty blatant censorship.

This change was, as you’ve probably guessed, in response to whinges from the usual sources (to whom I’m not going to give any more publicity), and to protect their precious markets in France, Germany, Austria, etc. where the sale of such things are forbidden. I note, with a deep sense of irony, that France and Austria currently have the two of the most popular extreme-right wing parties in Europe (Jorg Haider of the Freedom Party almost became Austria’s chancellor!), while Germany has perhaps the worst racial violence of any country in Western Europe.

It’s clear that attempts to doublethink the past into oblivion doesn’t work, and it’s equally obvious that Ebay’s caving-in to a vocal minority will have no positive effect. It’s nothing more than a purely mercenary decision made under the guise of morality, and deserves to be condemned as such.

Believe you’ve got an election coming up over there in Britain. Or at least, so I’ve heard, courtesy of the BBC web-site; that little item of news has not, so far, been deemed deserving of any coverage at all in any of the regular American media. Can’t say I’m sorry: Blair or Hague – what a delightful choice! Er, Hague is still leader of the Tories, isn’t he? Admittedly, was never sure on that point, even when I was living in Tulse Hill. At least British elections only last a month – here, the campaigning goes on for a year or more, and the post-vote lawsuits take almost as long. You’ve hardly brought in one president, before he heads out on the baby-kissing trail once again.

Another difference is well illustrated by the fact I was collapsing in a laughter at a phone-in radio show, where the presenter was outraged that the cost of gasoline (a.k.a. petrol) might go as high as $2/gallon! The horror! The horror! Even allowing for the fact that American gallons are smaller than British ones – because their pints are, at a mere 16 fl.oz. – this would certainly see riots in the UK, but only because, at that price, everyone would be rushing to fill up their tanks, baths, and every other container capable of holding fuel. There was even talk of a one-day fuel boycott, which I’m sure would work every bit as well as it did in Britain e.g. not at all, because even those people who took part just filled up in advance.

I don’t think refinery blockades would work either, simply because many Americans regard the ability to drive as a god-given right, and it is a necessity in Arizona due to the “somewhat limited” – I’m being very kind – public transport. Still, in a land where gas-guzzling cars are a staple [that advert in Robocop wasn’t much of an exaggeration], it was amusing to hear people saying things barely short of “they can take my Sports Utility Vehicle when they pry my cold, dead hands off the steering-wheel”. Think there must be some part of the American Constitution which enshrines the right to bear four-wheel drives and, clearly, no-one here remembers 1973.

On the other hand, there is at least a great deal of four-wheel drive suitable territory here, and unlike London, plenty of room to park anything bigger than a gnat’s arse. Even I have got used to driving a car you climb up into, to the extent that a “normal” (by British standards) car feels more like a go-cart. You also have to factor into gas mileage, the essential need for air-conditioning – 104 degrees is the forecast for today – which gobbles up so much fuel that certain steep slopes have a warning on them to turn off the A/C before beginning the ascent. Frankly, I’d rather run out of petrol and career hopelessly back down, than lose the cooling.

I can laugh, in part because I’m lucky to have a job that requires a daily commute of approximately 30 feet, from the bedroom to the office. And I’m pleased to report that Trash City – or the financially sound bit which sells beads, anyway – just had a banner week, with five grand in sales for the first time. We’re getting close to the point where Chris can quit her day job and work full-time on our plot to conquer the world through jewellery components. This is much-anticipated – not least by Chris herself, for obvious reasons, even if it’s a prospect I find more than a little scary. I am of a pessimistic persuasion, and so am certain that if we do go full-time, the bubble will immediately burst, and I’ll have to go work in McDonald’s. D’you want beads with that?