For the second time in ten years, I found myself commuting into town during rush hour yesterday. You'll recall, perhaps, that I made an unnecessary journey last week in order to attend a Seminar on Self-employment, but turned up a week early.

The trip was fraught, I was running late because bethan decided to wake up just as I was about to leave, but I still managed to get there just before the end of the introductions - not late enough to miss the usual "getting to know you" introductions from everyone. The Seminar started at 9:15, which is the exact time that radio 2's breakfast show does its God Slot, "Pause for thought". Sometimes these can be quite amusing, but mostly they're a dull interruption to Wogan's giggly banter.

Today, however, I was sat on the train, begging it to pull into the station before Pause For Thought started. I was practically bouncing in my seat as the head of the Sally Army was introduced and rambled on about some spiritual implication or other from the London bombings. I was staring frantically out of the window as the song that always follows Pause For Thought ended, jumping out of my seat as the 20 foot high arches that marked the approach to my station flew past the window. Despite agonising gout, I managed to almost leap up the million and a half stairs to street level and shambled up the road looking for all the world like Quasimodo without the back problem.

For half a second, I considered stopping at a rather nice baguette shop for breakfast, but decided on a chewing gum instead and hurried past, not relishing the painful quarter mile, agonising hike ahead of me.

Well, I turned up, not quite dishevelled, but drenched in sweat, almost on the stroke of half-past, praying that things held true to form and the start of the seminar had been delayed. It had. When I finally reached my 7th floor destination, the chap who greeted us said it had only just begun. Phew.

What followed was an exceptionally dull, but vitally important presentation on every aspect of making a success of starting your own business. We broke for biscuits (Oh joyful breakfast of digestives and custard dreams!) and a drink - I don't do coffee or tea, not because of any high minded ideals about caffeine intake, just that my IBS precludes me from drinking milk (the results are not pretty and definitely come under the heading "Too Much Information")- so it was off to the water cooler for me. When I returned, I got into a chat with a couple of other enrepreneurs (Ha! Me, an entrepreneur! As. If.). During the chat, when I determined that I would hand out my email address and phone number to them, I had a few braiwaves as to an angle I could use to promote my business.

You see, dear reader, there are a lot of clueless people on the internet. There's people out there who don't even know how to use Google. There's people who click on each and every link in their emails, and who wouldn't know a phishing email if it jumped up and bit them on the bum.

Most of them tend to use AOL.

Also, there's the vast majority of people who shove their wonderful, expensive, far-more-powerful-than-the-computers-that-sent-Armstrong-to-the-moon PC's stuck in an antisocial corner of the living room and only switch it on to play a game, or book a holiday, or buy a bunch of crap off ebay - naming no names (_{my sister}).

As far as I know, it's just me and a bunch of geeks in bedsits that use their computers to their best potential.

My PC sits next to the sofa - OK, that's not strictly true. The monitor, keyboard and mouse are next to the sofa, connected by five metre extension wires (I've had wireless keyboards and mice and they're crap) to the main box which sits on the opposite side of the fireplace, within easy reach of the TV, which it is connected to from the TV-out socket of my MPEG card. It's draped with an old check blanket - the kind that middle aged people put on the back seat of their cars to stop the dog getting mud all over the seat - acting as a rather effective noise reduction device. The PC is our DVD player, Radio, Hi-Fi, home office, photo gallery, mobile phone charger and organiser, entertainment station, games machine, kids toy, shopping mall, font of all wisdom and communication device. If I gave it a bit more effort, it could also be our phone and video recorder. With a second, very expensive widescreen LCD monitor, it could even replace the TV entirely.

It's also the docking station for our digital cameras, a video editing and production suite and quite a few other things that I can't think of right now.

You see, I like getting the most out of the things I buy. I don't like seeing things going to waste, or not being used for what they're meant to be used for - unless it's washing line offcuts (which, for reasons I'll leave to your imagination, finds its way into the bedroom).

So, my plans have solidified somewhat. I'm going to need a website, and some business cards, and a logo, and a full driving license and ideally a laptop with a mobile internet link. There'll be a grand unveiling soon when I've got everything solidified, but I won't say any more until then.

Now, all this costs money, so where does that come from? Luckily, there's a few local Enterprise schemes who lend money to new businesses, one of which specifically operates in Kings Heath, so i have to build a kickass Business Plan and tailor a presentation just for them, explaining everything I'm going to be doing, everything I'm already doing, advertising and customer retention plans, budgetting breakdowns and break even forecasts, then they'll give me a couple of thousand quid to start me off. The relaxing bit is that all through the seminar, the presenter kept referring to £2-3000 as "not much", so the £3000 I need should be a walk in the park.

Then the fun begins - do I register for VAT? When do I become a registered company? What do I do before passing my test? How much do I siphon off in order to live? How much do I charge? I dunno, whatever!

But what I do know is I'm nearly there. Big sigh of relief.

Who'd work for someone else when being Self-Employed is this much fun? Just don't ask me anything about VAT. They tried to explain it, they really did, but it's just baffling.