When I left school I got a job. You could do that then. Probably in that first week my fellow new recruit to the North Eastern Electricity Board saw an ad for a Folk Club in Richmond, North Yorks. No idea what a Folk Club was.
We found the back room of the Oak Tree packed out and folks sitting on beer crates, (wooden ones) singing their heads off.
It was the atmosphere that did it. The lively enthusiasm of performers and the copious hand-pulled ale before it was ever under threat and named 'real'.
Not long before I was singing though some years before buying a guitar. Couldn't have carried it on my scooter anyway.

Why I'm still going to pigging folk clubs a much harder question...