But with sales in the US throughout the 1990s in excess of 800,000 a year and with the gas-guzzlers still flying off the shelves, it will be a long time before public opinion blasts them into oblivion.

In Beijing, I've been spending a lot of time in the city's many beautiful parks and it has been a real breath of fresh air to wander among the trees without being jolted from those aforementioned potentially deep thoughts by the sound of a leaf-blower.

I have delighted in the armies of people who carefully sweep leaves into piles - often using brushes recycled from branches - before picking up the piles of leaves and twigs, depositing them in bicycle-drawn carts and hauling them off to the compost heap.

The work is labor-intensive, but it is quiet, effective and good for the environment.

Cities around the world should take a leaf out of Beijing's book and throw away their fossil-fuel-wasting, ear-drum-splitting, greenhouse-gas-belching leaf-blowers in favor of this superior low-tech option.

Clearly, the parks love the attention because they look sensational.

And with all this uninterrupted potential deep-thinking time, I have finally been able to figure out the answer to life, the universe and everything.

It's 42 just like Douglas Adams said it was in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Tomorrow, assuming leaf-blowers are still absent, I hope to figure out the identity of the one, true God.