The intention of the thread Bill (and Deckman and Q) was from a point of view of the recording not the performance - perhaps that wasn't clear. Though my friend has a reasonably broad Belfast accent I personally don't have any problems understanding him though his pronunciation of vowels is considerably different to my own. I understand Deckman's preoccupation with diction from his profile. I apologise for the poor attempt of humour on Deckman's post but people who come onto threads and shout about their particular bee-in-the-bonnet (especially when it is off topic) I usually find amusing and react accordingly.

The track is by no means a finished item but it was a good time to elicit comment and they have been useful.

Grab - thanks for the detailed comments. There is actually the same level of reverb on both the guitar and the vocal and no compression at all on the vocal (and as I said further up the thead it isn't me singing) but the pop shield will definitely be there in future when we do it properly. I've started to get Sound on Sound but haven't got round to getting this month's yet.
I actually tried to follow some of the suggestions from the March SoS edition on recording strings but probably not very successfully. Still it was a first attempt at recording a fiddle and I will just go back and rethink and no doubt improve. It comes across as 'cheap' and harsh and lacks the warmth it should have.

Noone at all has commented on one element of the track while every other bit has been mentioned (ie the bass) so I presume that sits about right in the mix - or is irrelevant?