One of the things I was happiest to leave behind in Britain were the tourists. Be they rampaging backpackers, knocking out three people every time they turned around, or organised groups of Japanese, frantically photographing “amusing” street entertainers, they were the main reason why going into the center of London was a chore rather than a pleasure. Entire swathes of territory were no-go areas, particularly in the summer, e.g. from Piccadilly Circus, through Leicester Square to Covent Garden, and north to Oxford Street.

Phoenix is nowhere near as much of a tourist destination, lacking much in the way of attractions or history (it was only incorporated in 1881). What it does have going for it, particularly in the winter, is a wonderful climate, and this is what draws in the “snowbirds” – the bane of all locals, and possibly even worse than any tourist, because they actually live here. Well, for four months of the year at least.

These people are the ones too wussy to cope with an Arizonan summer, even with air-conditioning, but come flocking like flies to horse-shit from about Thanksgiving (the end of November) through to Easter – or whenever the temperature goes above 100F. The vast majority are retired, it being much harder for actual working people to take four months off. And the mindset they bring is equally and relentlessly retired – at times, it’s as if the entire state smells of wee.

These estimated 300,000 visitors a year inevitably place a severe burden on every aspect of Arizonan life. Imagine London, with every Premiership team playing at home, and the FA Cup final at Wembley too – every day, for four months. Restaurants, which the rest of the year are quiet and peaceful, suddenly become jammed with shambling geriatric zombies, ordering the senior citizen specials and gumming up the works for those of us with jobs, who are only able to have their breakfasts somewhere near breakfast-time.

Post-offices, banks, supermarkets, doctors – it’s all the same. But it’s on the road that perhaps the worst carnage takes place. All residents know to give cars with out-of-state number plates a wide berth because, put bluntly, they haven’t got a fucking clue. They don’t know where they’re going, half of them can’t see further than the end of the bonnet, and their average speed is a resolute ten miles per hour below the speed limit. “I haven’t had an accident in fifty years,” they’ll say – no, but how many have you caused frustrated drivers behind you?

The comforting thing is that, like locusts and diarrhoea, you know they’ll be gone eventually – well, save the ones who keeled over during a session at Marie Callender’s all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch. Though given how most of them look nearly-dead anyway, not sure how you’d tell the difference. Until then, I guess we’ll just have to grin and bear it, at least until we can sweep past them with a victorious cry of “Go back to Illinoooooooois…”.

I had a nicely whiny editorial all written, about the ineptness of PayPal and AOL – but then I thought, “You don’t need to hear me complaining about life again”. So, here’s guest columnist Emily Fata to complain about life instead…

A little background first. She has been after us to buy her a cellphone for a while. Precisely why she needs one – apart from the obvious one that ‘all her friends have one’ (a fact open to some dispute, actually) – has yet to be established. But we said that if she worked to pay for it (two hours, twice a week – and work is a loose term, encompassing whining, moaning and complaining about work as well as actually productive and gainful employment), she could have it.

This, however, proved too much for her to cope with – particularly when put alongside shopping at the mall, hanging out with her friends, and so on. The following was received by Chris and I as her letter of resignation – we feel sure she has a great future in front of her, perhaps as a trial lawyer, a diplomat or an enforcer for a loan-shark, guilt-tripping debtors into paying up… Who’d be a parent? 🙂

As well as a time for giving and receiving presents, Christmas is also about thinking of those less fortunate, who might not be able to take part in the whole gift-exchange thing. But personally, I can’t help thinking how lucky they are, because they avoid the worst thing about Christmas – having to wrap the goddamn things.

I’m firmly with Dave Barry on this. He pointed out that the Bible wrote about gold, frankincense and myrrh, without mentioning wrapping paper anywhere. This tells us two things about the people giving the gift: a) they were wise, and b) they were men. The desire to wrap seems an almost entirely feminine trait, and the point of it largely escapes me; an extra few seconds delay before you know what it is is hardly going to make a difference. And no matter how nicely tied up with ribbon they are, handkerchiefs are still handkerchiefs.

Present-wrapping is thus one of the things I do out of a sense of traditional obligation and, to be honest, it shows. My parcels tend, like The Force, to have a light side and a dark side. From the front, all appears calm and smooth, but turn them over to reveal a nightmarish mess of multiple applications of sticky tape, gobbets of wrapping paper and blood-spatters (I can never work those sticky-tape dispensers at the best of times, no matter while one hand is holding down two recalcitrant flaps of spring-propelled festive greetings).

And that’s a best case scenario, where the present in question is relatively Euclidean. Books, DVDs and CDs are fine, but step outside those and you enter a topological nightmare of n-Space where it’ll take longer to wrap an object than it did to find it, buy it and bring it home in the first place. Just as many objects can be deformed into the same basic shape, so all presents will end up looking like a burst football run over by a Chieftain tank, if you apply enough wrapping paper. Mind you, we men do consider things like Klingon battle daggers fine presents to give and receive, if not perhaps to wrap. We only have ourselves to blame in such cases.

This is where gift-wrapping services come in, and it’s no surprise that the only present of mine which looks half-decent is the one that was wrapped in store. A younger, more innocent version of me once walked into a shop that offered such a perk, only to be sadly disappointed when told that, no, you actually had to buy the item there. This seemed terribly unfair, and ever since, it has been my dream to find a store in the mall that doesn’t just sell wrapping paper and Sellotape, they also install it for you. If it’s good enough for household appliances and car parts, it should be good enough for Christmas presents.

Alternatively, there’s an awful lot of money to be made out of duct tape with a festive theme – just wrap it around the present until it’s completely covered, and there you are, all ready to place under the tree. But failing that, I guess I’ll just have to wish for peace on Earth and goodwill to men, like everyone else. May you all have a happy festive season, and get whatever you want – nicely wrapped or not!

The pre-festive rush is in full swing, dammit. If I used to be jaundiced before about the whole “Spirit of Christmas” thing before I leapt over the counter, as it were, I’m much worse now. Among our customers, the score is roughly ten to one in favour of “Can you ship this yesterday?” over “Merry Christmas!” or any other expression involving peace on earth, goodwill to men, and other topics unconnected to express delivery.

There is also supposed to be a recession on, but I can’t say that Chris and I have noticed. In three days after Thanksgiving, we did more business than in the whole month of March, which is gratifying, but leads to much collapsing into bed at 11pm, groaning slightly at the prospect of the same again tomorrow. It’s probably safe to say that our level of customer service has suffered a little; we now insist that people use the online site to order, except in special circumstances (“I don’t have a computer” is no longer deemed special enough), and briefly toyed with the idea of replacing our voice mail message with 30 seconds of Chris laughing hysterically.

While on the subject of online shopping, I’ve been avoiding the hassles of stores and malls this year. Or at least, exchanging those hassles for the different ones provided by the Internet. Rather too many companies have realised that while a million monkeys banging away at typewriters may take some millenia to produce Shakespeare, they’ll create an online shopping experience in no time at all. Certain large, three-letter acronymed companies (names kept secret until December 25th, for obvious reasons) prompt for input of data, then three screens later, gleefully inform you that you missed a field out. It’s less shopping, than an online game of Snakes and Ladders.

Back at Trash City, we finally abandoned the late afternoon rush to the Post Office, in favour of an early-morning one. There are several benefits to this: not only is it quieter, you also get the advantage of Post Office employees who may occasionally smile, since they have not had their heads bitten off for eight hours straight. It always struck me as odd that those who “went postal” tended to shoot other employees rather than customers… [This week’s useless fact: the term “going postal” originated after Patrick Sherrill, a part-time postman in Oklahoma, killed 14 people in the post office before taking his own life.]

On the other hand, you miss the 5pm lock-in; it was always amusing to be there when they lock the doors, and watch the 5:01 pm customers bouncing off like frustrated lemmings. They’d plead with the guardian to let them in, but he was relentless – awesome to watch, he could have become a bouncer at any swanky nightclub. “Sorry, mate, you’re not coming in.” Those of us inside chortle merrily away to ourselves, even though it is surely only a matter of time before a bad set of traffic lights condemns us to the same fate. Another reason to go early, perhaps.

But we cope, and meanwhile continue in the ceaseless battle to stop our icicle lights from falling off the roof, sending our offspring up there to apply ever more adhesive tape. For, after all, isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

One year ago today, I got off the plane in Phoenix, ready to begin my new life… It seems like a millenium: I was single, the World Trade Center was still standing, and the first American with whom I had significant contact, was a Customs Officer, who grilled me for what seemed like an entire twelve months in itself over the plaster of paris in my luggage, suspecting it was drugs. How things change – nowadays, he’d probably assume it was anthrax.

Yes, I’ve survived an entire year in Arizona, and have reached the end of it without (fingers crossed) acquiring any malignant melanomas. Despite what I said above, the time has actually flown past, and I feel sure I must have hibernated for three or four months at least, entering a state of suspended animation when the air-conditioning broke down, or something like that. Actually, the heat, originally suspected to be a major problem, turned out to be nowhere near as much of a problem. Back in my youth, my mother spent most of the summer trying to persuade me to play outside because it was a “lovely day”. She also tried to make me eat vegetables. Now I’m an adult, I don’t have to do either.

I’m now thoroughly used to all the stuff that seemed so strange to start with: cinemas in which you can’t book actual seats, just a vague promise of admission; free refills on soft drinks in restaurants; commercials on the BBC [or at least, BBC America], interrupting the likes of Fawlty Towers and Red Dwarf to sell you compilation CDs of the best ukelele ballads, volume 3. Coping with this is now all part of regular existence, and demonstrates the remarkable flexibility and resilience of the human spirit. Er, or something like that.

Credit where credit’s due though: that the process of transition has been so painless must largely been due to my fiancee [a word I’m still formally getting used to!] Chris, who has smoothed over all the bumps in my road, and is undoubtedly the #1 thing I’ll be giving thanks for tomorrow – it being my second Thanksgiving in America. “Second”: more proof I’ve been here for a complete cycle of the seasons, and I’ve learned from last year’s mistakes, not the least of which might be that there is such a thing as too much honey-baked ham.

Meanwhile, progress towards getting married is slowly being made, though my Mother appears to be well ahead of any vague plans we have formulated – she has had some 34 years start on us. Part of me doesn’t want to get married any more: but before Chris (sitting next to me), has a fit, I should point out that I do still want to be married – it’s just the actual ‘getting’ part that seems to be as much a chore as a pleasure!

Right, that’s your lot – we’ve closed up shop for four days (we’ve got a lot to be thankful for!), which should give us enough time to plough through the turkey and out the other side. A Happy Anniversary to me, a Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers, and to all our British ones, a Happy…er, two-and-a-bit-weeks-past-Bonfire-Night. 🙂