NO SURPRISE at all that Ardagh won the Tidy Towns competition when the Irish Independent revealed the other day that the town was swept by rumours all weekend.

Oh all right, not very funny.

Anyway. No word yet from the solicitors on my interview with "Muriel" (not her real name), the Dublin bed and breakfast landlady who put up Larry Goodman for five nights during the Beef Tribunal at a cost to the taxpayer of £3,536.

In the meantime then, questions (perhaps even some answers) relating to identity, reality, definition, clarity and art.

Oh and language. I see where my colleague John Waters notes that the argument contained in a lecture given by Dr Terry Eagleton to the recent Desmond Greaves School was "intelligent, lucid and radical", but was "certainly not couched in the language of Ireland's Own."

The implication seems to be that the language of (the venerable) Ireland's Own is on the simple side - easy to understand by people of modest intellectual means.

This is perfectly true. I have in front of me - actually to one side of me if we are being particular, and we are rarely anything else - the latest issue, promoted as the 1996 Autumn Annual, and at 85p for 64 pages it is excellent value.

Among its delights are a lively four pages of letters, two pages of great stuff by Myles na Gopaleen, a few short stories, anecdotes, poetry, historical pieces, a "stranger than fiction" tale, stories by O. Henry, Eric Cross and J. B. Keane, the words of some Beatles songs, the Motorist's Prayer, a piece on the Irish with the "Midas touch", health advice, cartoons, children's pages, letters from people trying to trace friends and relations, a classified column, the words of requested songs, a crossword, and a joke page - "The Lilt of Irish Laughter."

Sample: A man and boy get on a bus, and the conductor asks how old the boy is.

"He's only four," says the man.

"He looks more like 14," says the conductor.

"Yes - he's a worrier."

I like everything about Ireland's Own, including the fact that I can tell the person looking for the words to "The Violets Were Scenting the Woods, Maggie" that the lady's name is not Maggie but Nora, that the violets were (also) displaying their charms to the bee, and this attractive scenario was played out when I first said I loved only you, Nora, and you said you loved only me. There is some more romantic material involving the birds in the trees singing songs (Nora) but I have forgotten it.

A language that is not the language of Ireland's Own may well be readable and clear and unaffected but the example it gives is not to be dismissed easily. If Professor Terry Eagleton could make himself understood as clearly as Ireland's Own is understood by its many readers, he would be doing well.

Of course I may be on the wrong tack here altogether if the Heland's Own italics were a typographical error and John was actually referring to Ireland's Own, or more likely Ireland's Eoghan. That is a possibility.

All right. There is a new book out by David Quammen called The Song of the Dodo (Plutchinson, £20). It is about islands - it could nearly be called Islands Own and it may force us to revise our ideas about Ireland as a little island. Reviewing the book in The Times, Richard Dawkins notes that islands are not just small pieces of land surrounded by water. They are small pieces of anything surrounded by whatever serves as a barrier to animal or plant dispersal: "To a fish, a lake is an island of water surrounded by land. In the world of the yellow bellied marmot, mountain tops can form an archipelago of islands jutting out of the plain".

So Ireland is merely an island within islands, and there are many islands within this island, some of them consisting of water rather than land.

It is a simple but somehow cheerful way of looking at things.

But it is easy to pick up the wrong idea, or even a series of them. I read that Kenneth Harman (49), a Londoner, has been advised by doctors to cut down on his strenuous pastime after a heart attack. Right away I presume he is a three times weekly rugby player, or boxer, or motor racer. It turns out instead he is a leading player of postal chess.

Does he, then, over indulge? Is he perhaps devoting huge amounts of nervous energy to the devising of new strategy? Is he rowing with the International Chess Federation over changes in the castling rule?

No: he makes one move a week. What then has brought on his heart problems?

Nothing more than his extreme nervousness while waiting for the postman.