Wow! Great! Somebody wrote a song about being a reed cutter! I promise to learn it and tell the sad tale...

So... Why did I pick on being a reed cutter when making a generalisation about people singing about activities that are not exactly indigenous?

Well, one of my friends in the old days was the singer Tom Brown. Tom was a Norfolk lad, from Caister originally. Many people may remember Tom and Bertha Brown on the circuit in the '70s and up to the mid '80s till Tom eventually passed away in 1989.

Tom used to sing a song called "The Reed Cutter's Daughter." He claimed he learned it at his mother's knee. Good enough for me. The only person I knew who you could listen to an unaccompanied song about reed cutting and feel a heritage was being lived out. (Ok, I met Fred Jordan a few times...)

To be fair, it was one of his longer songs, and once you were word perfect yourself, you envied those whose pint pot was empty and justifiable to go to the bar just before he started singing it...