Travelling people over here ("gispsies") are largely illiterate, particularly the older ones, aged forty and up. But they have very keen memories indeed. The musical ones are perfectly capable of "writing" or memorising long ballads, and are remarkably good at calculating with money. Seems the part of our brains we frivolously employ on reading and writing could be much better employed!

Back to my tangent ... I suppose people in the States go train-spotting? It's a very popular pastime in the UK to collect locomotive numbers. It's traditionally been done mainly by kids (boys!), but there are a good many adults (boys again!) who still do it. The anorak is ideal wear for standing around on cold draughty and often wet stations waiting for trains, if you do it for fun. So, anyway, train-spotters have become known as "anoraks"; and, by extension, anyone with an interest tending to the obsessive in a minority pastime (i.e. not soccer, cricket, cars or sex) has also come to be known as an anorak. We folkies are prime candidates! (Incidentally, Trekkies are even more anorak-y in the popular eye; I was amused to see int a recent tv listing that one of the Star Trek spin-offs actually has a character called Annorax!)

Steve