Meanwhile, I've enjoyed a pleasant sea change

Eugen Herrigel has a lot to answer for. He kicked off this whole "Zen and the Art of . . ." thing with his Zen in the Art of Archery published in Germany in 1948. People who know about these things said it was good on zen and good on archery. Pity the copycats couldn't be the same.

Wikipedia says there are now 200 books with similar titles – and that's before you start counting blogs. The other day someone gave me Zen and the Art of Lawn Bowls!

Robert M. Pirsig rekindled the genre in 1974 with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Being a keen biker (still am!), I accelerated past Pirsig's warning:

What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either.

It was quite an interesting account of a motorcycle tour across the US, and I'm glad I read it. But I never did fall into line with all those other people who said Pirsig's book changed their lives.

Today, if anyone offers a book titled Zen and the Art of Something, let's poke it with a sharp stick. It's probably limp and lifeless, giving off a faint whiff of the 1970s.

Sorry you had to find out the hard way, Lindsay.

As for standup comedians spraying obscene words at their audience (or their readers), isn't that so 1970s too?

It began when comedians moved from the theatre stage into alcohol-sodden pubs and clubs, and it coincided with a sort of liberation mood when young people rejected the pursed-lips wowserism they'd experienced from their parents through the 1950s and early 60s.

Shouting four-letter words was so liberating! Wasn't it?

With Alex, it's good to know he laughed like a drunken Irishman as he read The Best of Forwarded Emails. I'm glad he didn't say imbecile Sikh, which must have been a temptation after reading a whole chapter of Sardarji jokes.

Thanks, Alex, for pointing me to Getting IT Right. It sounds just what I need to stay on top of all these newfangled YouTube and Web 3.0 and podcast things I'm supposed to master to stay in the action.

Me? I've had an enjoyable time on a Scottish island. I could nit-pick my way through some faults with Peter Culling's Isle of Enniskerry, but what the hell, it's an enjoyable yarn. Perhaps this sort of thing rekindles Boy's Own enthusiasms from my far-distant youth.

I guess you read the blurb. Jim wins four million quid in a British national lottery, buys a deserted Scottish island which once supported a laird in a big house and some farmers and fishermen in crofts, recruits a diverse group of people wanting to escape city life, and gets the island moving again.

So where could I find fault? First, Culling writes well, but could do better if he learned to revise and revise again (fundamental to a writer's craft) until he chopped at least a fifth of his words, and sharpened up those he kept. He should learn his spellchecker won't pick out "principal" when he intends "principle", or "to" instead of "too".

Jim says he doesn't want the new islanders to think of him as the laird, but he spends much of his time dispensing avuncular advice, and you'll wait in vain to see him spit on his hands and pick up a crowbar or shovel to help those rebuilding crofts or farmyards.

Perhaps Culling should get hold of the Mills & Boon writer's manual, where he could learn to structure his novel with a few crises which threaten the whole project. And because the novel ends with a romantic happy ending, a few bitter misunderstandings and unrequited yearnings along the way would have built tension.

There were problems, such as a vet who couldn't get on with the farmers, and a gang of bovver boys who tried to trash the island, but they were seen off quite easily.

And fundamentally, too, I wonder whether the success of Jim's endeavours leaves him and his islanders living in the same sort of high-pressure, businesslike world they'd set out to escape.

But don't let my quibbles put you off. I think you'd enjoy Isle of Enniskerry. I did.

To save Christine from having to answer those Globusz guys in New York, wowser is one of those wonderful Ocker (that means Aussie!) words describing those prune-faced, anti-fun people who would be called killjoys, blue-stockings or puritans in other parts of the world. Hence wowserism.

Some say it was invented by John Norton, an unsavory Sydney newspaper proprietor around the end of the 19th Century, and some say it's an acronym derived from We Only Want Social Evils Remedied.