Two points to add to this excellent discussion: Harry Oldham, if I understand him rightly, thinks it's a bit odd to follow a railway song with a railway song. This is one of the finest times in our club - where singer A sings a fishing song from the coast; singer B has fished that general area, adds a song about a place near there; singer C has sailed in the area and contributes a funny shipwreck song - - etc. I realize that you've got to be in a special place with singers and songs located in that place. And no, I'm not in Newfoundland, but in BC. We once sang a whole set on salmon fishing, and the second set on halibut, herring, and whale from the same coast. I know this is much more difficult in the UK, and that the songs one likes, for example, Tommy Armstrong's Durham mining songs, cannot possibly speak to a southern England audience. But we're fortunate here to have a lot of logging, mining and fishing songs, and though the songs themselves are not VERY well known, the audience oftentimes has personal knowledge/experience or contact, through a partner, a family member or friend with the trade in question. When you get a song circle with this kind of richness, the songs naturally call to one another, and what starts as a performance becomes a conversation. Don't take me wrong when I say this for me is the best kind of love-making, too. That's point one, and one I struggled wiith as a young singer in southern England, with no natural repertoire to sing from.

Point two: the question we have to ask re the ring-binders and the books is: Is this paper necessary? Oftentimes it is, and, as the I Ching says, "No blame". But oftentimes it gets in the way. If we ask ourselves (and encourage others to ask themselves, too) the question, and adapt our own behaviour accordingly, then we'll solve the problem. Nu?