An infinite scream passing through...

You must have those moments.

The ones where you make this great idea kind of response to someone, they take you up on it, and delivering turns into nightmare on main street.

My mum makes cards. They're actually pretty good, and I suggested we try selling some on eBay. What on earth possessed me??!! The fact that I appreciated the concept of eBay, but not, as they say, as it applied to me (having never ever registered / bought / sold); that's what.

She doesn't use a computer, so I had to buy her a digital camera and printer that worked just between themselves. And show her how to use them after my dad comandeered the printer to do photocopies.

I thought I was safe... it seemed like she would never get around to doing all the pictures. In the meantime I eventually got around to investigating the "how to sell" pages - and I start to get the notion that all is not going to be plain sailing as just navigating to and around help sections proves a darn sight harder than it should be.

And then this giant wodge of stuff arrives from mum in the post - all the thumbnails of her cards stuck onto sheets of paper and coded, sized, blurbed, captioned, etc. There are hundreds. And no common naming conventions, or anything that will help make this easier to understand (I, clearly, do NOT make cards).

So I eventually stopped putting it off and made a start on Sunday. I cannot bear to relate the whole sorry tale but the sad truth is after - when did I start, 3pm? - 5 hours, I had just managed to register, set up Paypal and an email account for her (that I will have to monitor) and post 2, yes thats two items. Heaven help me, what have I started?

All I can say is, no wonder there is a small industry making money selling help books around using eBay. To say they need some decent usability implementation would be the understatement of the century - thats a running century, not the current decade.

My mind felt numb by the end - usually a feat only achieved after at least two bottles of wine - a situation I felt honour-bound to try and rectify in what was left of my evening after serving up dinner.

Ho hum. It's Wednesday tomorrow, and I still have at least 150 items to go. And she hasn't even started phtographing the Christmas cards yet! Can anyone think of a reason for me to be sent to, oh, how about the Outer Hebrides, for at least six months??? Please??!!!