Digital maze

New Year, New Radio. And not just any old wireless. It’s one of the latest digital wonders, which has inside its chic black casing a mini-computer that can whisk me round the world in a matter of seconds to visit tens of thousands of radio stations. For reasons that are as yet beyond me, though, I’ve only succeeded so far in travelling straight to Z, with no idea how to get back through the alphabet, not having a tame teenager on site to show me the way. (The instruction manual can of course only be accessed on computer and is written in a language some way between Urdu and Mandarin.) ‘Z’ has given me Zevox, Zhenzhou, Zeilsteen, Zeta, Zuidoost Brabant and Zoo, and I’ve travelled vicariously (or rather virtually) from Paris to Thessalonica by way of China, Holland and Belgium. The strange thing is I needn’t have bothered since everywhere (or at least everywhere in Z-land) sounds exactly the same: cheesy pop lyrics accompanied either by thrashing guitars or sobbing violins.