A bonne bouche for those who like trivia: Ewan and Peggy dined with us at a seafood cafe in Vancouver (the Marine View, almost entirely shoreworkers and now long gone) a few decades back and Ewan was DISGUSTED that they fried oysters there - apparently a no-no for people who've only ever eaten them raw (I've never eaten one at all!).

Rika Ruebsaat and I were their guests in Kent when we asked for their input on our radio series, and they gave it to us with both barrels, for which we are eternally grateful. We regarded them as comrades in a joint struggle for traditional music, and their greater experience made our music better. We both grew up in households where argument and back-and-forth were one of the joys of living, and so strong opinion is to us a blessing. I can well understand that those whose childhoods lacked that back-and-forth because "it's not polite to argue/disagree" might well have trouble dissociating the personal from the political in a loud argy-bargy.

Jon Bartlett