Blog: Crazy from the heat (and air conditioning bills)

Former Shropshire man Mark Ellis on life in the American state of Arizona

Blog: Time to hunker down or leave town - summer has arrived with a vengeance.

Every year it happens. We enjoy a few months of fabulous weather and outdoor living starting around the middle of October. By Christmas it is positively chilly with blue skies and high temperatures in the mid to high 60s (20 C), and the potential for overnight frost.

By March/April the weather is gorgeous, warm days and balmy evenings.

Then June arrives and we start to wonder why any sane human, or any other living creature, would inhabit such a completely inhospitable place as the desert in Arizona.

This year we have been very lucky as the crazy heat arrived much later that normal, but then it seemed to just happen. No gradual warm-up, just suddenly hot. Extremely hot. Usually it sneaks up on us through June and by the beginning of July everyone is moaning about the temperature.

Last weekend the forecast was for 117 F (47 C) and many people headed out of town for the long Independence Day weekend. And those that can will stay out of town and not return until school goes back at the beginning of August.

Lots of people head to the California coast where San Diego becomes Scottsdale-on-Sea for a month or two; some head to the mountains in northern Arizona where it is much cooler (provided the fires are out), and some get to stay here and rack up a massive air-conditioning bill.

When I first moved here the overall cost of living was very reasonable compared to the UK. Food was cheap, petrol was super-cheap, and clothes, cars, houses, etc… were relatively cheap. Tax rates were low - both income and sales (VAT) taxes were a lot lower than those to which I had become accustomed in England.

The cheapest I recall petrol being was 99 cents a gallon, or about 62p at today's exchange rate, and visitors would bring a spare suitcase to stock up on clothes, mainly Levi's.

Things have changed quite dramatically over the past few years. Petrol, while still cheap compared to the UK, is nudging $4.00 a gallon, food prices have soared, and utilities seem to have gone through the roof. And I won't get into car insurance costs with two young drivers.

Similar to the UK we have to pay for water, electricity and gas based on usage. Water and gas generally are not too offensive unless your yard irrigation springs a leak and you dump a few thousand gallons of unplanned water on your grass.

Electricity is the air-conditioning powering, wallet draining, utility that is expensive enough to drive you to drink when paying your monthly bill.

The challenge is that AC is one of the causes of bitter marital strife in many households, mine included. I am happy to have the AC set at 82 degrees, but wifey thinks 78 is so much more acceptable. I think a monthly mid-summer bill of about $500 is offensive enough, apparently she thinks $700 is a small price to pay for a few degrees cooler.

How people survived here before the advent of AC I will never understand but I'm willing to wager they would have had a much smaller electricity bill than me.

So, for the next few months me and my fellow Zonies will spend our days indoors, visiting the supermarket after dark, going to the Mall and movies to enjoy someone else's AC, and fighting over the shade of the lone tree in the parking lot if we have to drive anywhere during the day.

And trying to stay married when fighting over those few extra degrees of cool air.