"Oh dear - read it how you will, you can't demonstrate the size of the Festival without analogy or example but of course - the minute you use a yardstick it is read a different way. Now read this wrong -if you can."

I can't understand a word of this. Please, Mr Red, for those of us that are less erudite, can you tell me what this means without taking the piss?

We - me partner and kids, folkies ("musos" even maybe)through and through - went to Shrewsbury, had a great time, thought a couple of acts were noisy, didn't enjoy Paul Brady so went to listen to The Wilsons instead. We went to a couple of smaller venues, thought the unaccompanied singing was great (The Wilsons, Quartz, Stream of Sound and particularly Rapsquillion).

If the agenda is about giving lots of people what they want (because they obviously wouldn't turn up if it was wasn't) then good for the Surtees for responding.

If you couldn't hear people when you were 150 yards from the tent then you must already have a hearing problem. Or more likely, because I saw you as well, its because you were conducting a conversation whilst 'playing' your bodhrain, next to the little sessions that were happening in the table and chair area. Whichever, to suggest that the noise levels from the marquee were the cause, is crap.

I object to the pejorative connotation of the term 'me generation', particularly when being used by someone who seems to be suggesting that things shouldn't move on because it may spoil it for him.

Is it unusual for a mechanical engineer a sound expert a public health consultant and a witty punster, to also be a such a Luddite?

Vote with your feet Mr Red. And could you please use plainish English on here so that idiots like me can understand what the hell you're on about.