TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP OUT...

ISN'T TECHNOLOGY A WONDERFUL THING?

Suddenly having time on your hands isn't necessarily a bad thing. It gives you a chance to sit back and think. To have a bit of a muse.

It gives you breathing space. It gives you the chance to discover new things. It gives you the valuable opportunity to develop new talents.

It's invigorating. It's stimulating. It's refreshing.

And it isn't half bloody quiet.

After weekends of teenagers slamming doors, playing i-pods, shouting up and down stairs and having a different TV programme on in every room, the silence of Monday mornings is astonishingly deafening.

Or it was, until I discovered the joys of DAB radio.

Apart from offering sound quality that's light years away from my old 1960s tranny (I mixed with all-sorts, I'll have you know), it also offers a range of choice we never dreamed of when we had our ears glued to Caroline under the bed sheets. (It wasn't until the latter part of my adolescence that I discovered the joys of welding more interesting parts of my anatomy to ladies…)

There are classic rock channels, indie rock channels, dad rock channels, classical channels, channels for just about every sort of music, in fact, that your little lug-holes desire.

But, strangely for someone who's spent a large part of their life as a musician, I don't play a lot of music during the day. Much as I applaud DAB for keeping me safe from the bigoted, humourless rants of arch egotists like the dreadful Chris (if-he-didn't-exist-you-certainly-wouldn't-invent-him) Moyles, or from being seduced into premature senility by Wogan's aimiable old-bufferish banter and smooth grooves, I actually prefer the sound of voices to tunes during the day.

Voices make me feel like I'm not alone, you see. It sounds like these people are actually there, in my house, performing just for me. Which I guess may something to do with being an only child.

Don’t get me wrong - I had a very happy childhood, but, from as early as I can remember I've had a thing about voices - and radio comedy in particular. I've got shelves heaving under the weight of cassette collections of Hancock, Round the Horne, Beyond our Ken, The Goons, I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Steptoe and Son, and the like. Not to mention Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Jeremy Hardy, Jack Dee, Woody Allen and Emo Phillips (one of the best joke writers you're ever likely to find - trust me, you just have to get past the funny voice).

I've got dozens of beautifully delivered Sherlock Holmes stories on tape. I've got 'Talking Heads' and some great Alan Bennett collections.

And now I've got BBC Radio 7.

If you haven't turned on and tuned in yet, I heartily recommend that you do. And check out the listen again service online too. In the last month or so you've missed a fantastically funny detective spoof, 'Boxer and Doberman' by Alastair Jessiman, Philip Glenister in a brilliant adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 'Inside Mr. Enderby', a great play about Brian Epstein and the Beatles, the fabulous 'Beachcomber, By the Way', with Richard Ingrams, entertaining new detective adventures with Nick Fisher's Julie Enfield (and her dad), and a stunningly written and performed up-date of Faust by Martin Jenkins, starring the marvellous Mark Gatiss, amongst others.

And you get a good couple of hours of classic comedy a day, too.

The great thing about rediscovering radio is realising how much joy it is to really use your imagination, rather than being passively persuaded by the clever moves of a gifted director or the combined mega-gigabyte talents of a Hollywood CGI department.

And apart from offering stimulating entertainment, as well as blasts from the past they're commissioning writers too. Which can't be a bad thing. Must make a note to send them something.

And I will send them something, really I will, when I find the time to write it. I'm just so busy these days. I mean, with a couple of blogs to keep going and the fly fishing (3 nice trout last week - sorry Andy, your turn to catch next time), and the snooker, and the football it's a wonder I have time to play guitar at all.

But I do - and it's coming on a treat, thanks to a wonderful piece of technology.

I can't praise the Tascam CD-GT2 highly enough. It's a little box (that only costs around a hundred quid), not much bigger than a portable CD player that allows you to plug a guitar in and play along with any CD you like. And not just play along, but play along at any tempo you like - in the same key (you can even drop the original guitar out, so you can be the hero). So you slow a track down, practice and practice, then speed up gradually until you reach the desired tempo.

But what use is that, I hear you say, when you're playing gypsy jazz on an acoustic?

A lot of bloody use, you old sceptic you, I reply. Because it's got a handy line-out socket and a headphone socket too. So you simply plug in a simple little set of i-pod stylee speakers, load up your Robin Nolan, Colin Cossimini, or Stephane Wrembel backing tracks, and you've got a fantastic backing band in your living room - who'll play at any tempo you tell them to.

Actually, I wonder if they'd perform my radio play for me too?

We could star off rehearsing slowly and build up to speed. If I ever get round to writing it.

IN EALING, NO-ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM...

IT'S LIFE JIM, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT…

Suddenly, I'm in an alien environment. Not that my home is particularly other-worldly - I don't have to navigate my way through surreal H.R. Geiger-esque landscapes to find the kitchen, or clamber over moonrocks to get to the bathroom - but it's a strange place to be, just the same.

It's strange because I shouldn't be here now. Not really. Not during the week. I should be at work. That's what proper people do Monday to Friday. They go out and earn a crust, instead of idly doodling away at keyboards or noodling away on guitars.

It's strange because it feels so distant, so far away from everything I took for granted for so long. It's only Ealing for heaven's sake, but if feels like a completely different world. A world that's cut off from the rest of civilisation.

I didn't really notice the strangeness of it for a month or so.

At first, the phone would ring a dozen times a day, and new emails would regularly ping their cheery way through, delivering messages of support, condolences, suggestions and invitations. I still felt part of it all. I still felt connected. I almost still felt busy.

Then, as the weeks went by, the calls got fewer and further between and the emails gradually dried up, until getting my penis enlarged was the only offer in my inbox. No offers of work. No-one offering to meet me for a pint and a chat. Just the promise of a bigger dick. And a link to hot babes on-line (which I suppose means your dick only virtually gets bigger, rather than actually necessitating an out-sized pair of boxers).

I've realised that it doesn't matter how many hopeful emails you send, how many calls you make, or how hard you try to stay in touch - once you're out of the club, your voice gradually gets fainter and fainter until you can't be heard at all. You're in a different space, and it's one that working people don't have the time or inclination to visit. Quite rightly.

Of course, as virtually every annoying bastard you meet in the boozer tells you (I know you're trying to be kind, but honestly it only exacerbates the situation - please just buy me a pint and talk about the football), this could be the best thing that's ever happened. It's a blessing in (a not very convincing) disguise. It's the chance to branch out, to move on and do something new.

The trouble with something new, however, is that by its very nature it's an alien world. And people aren't desperately keen to let you into it.

As complimentary as people have been about my writing, getting anyone to commission me for anything other than advertising work is like trying to get a Norwegian ref to give a penalty.

I was put up for a writing job a while ago, for example, but when I got in touch the headhunter (12 years old if he was a day), took one look at my CV and said, 'Sorry, this isn't for you. You're an advertising man, and they want a digital writer.' A digital writer? What do they do, then? Write in bloody binary?

I would have hoped that, having written award winning press and TV work for a huge range of clients over the years, not to mention having written DM, banners, comedy, speeches, brochures and even websites (covering subjects as disparate as the motor trade, insurance, incontinence pads and luxury golf clubs), he might have seen that I'm nothing if not versatile.

But the truth is, while one might have assumed that the brave new world of communication would offer all sorts of exciting possibilities for creative cross-fertilisation, the reality is that all that has been created are some nice new pigeon holes.

Still, even alien environments can be successfully explored if you've got the inclination and determination.

A couple of months ago, for instance, I thought the world of gypsy jazz guitar was inhabited by people very different from me. People with unnaturally dextrous hands and ears tuned-in to exotic harmonies. I, on the other hand, was from somewhere else entirely, where rockabilly and blues rule - OK?

But, thanks to no little blood sweat and tears, in a relatively short time I've actually evolved, and grown from a grunting leather clad rocker into a sophisticated manouche stylist.

Oh, all right, as anyone who knows me (or should I say used to know me) will tell you, I'm still a leather clad grunting rocker, and probably always will be. But at least I'm one that can now trip the light fantastic on the melodic minor scale, embellish things with a carefully chosen arpeggio or two and end with a nifty chromatic flourish. All with an enigmatic Gallic smile.

If only someone would let me flex my writing muscles…