I've been around then Mudcat since the last century... I like saying stuff like that. In fact I mean since 1999. In the time-warp world of the Internet that makes me a veteran, I suppose.

And one thing that has been consistant throughout has been people saying that it's not the way it used to be in the Good Old Days, or the Rare Ould Times. Only that the definition of the Good Old Days and the Rare Ould Times has moved on over the years to include the times when people were lamenting the passing of the Good Old Days.

Things change, and there is loss as well as gain. As it gets bigger that means that things that were good to have aren't there any more, and it isn't always easy to recognise the good things that have come along. But they are there.

There are people who have stopped coming around whom I miss, but it doesn't just happen here. No reason to assume that because someone stops turning up to a folk session that they have quarrelled with soemone, or got fed up with the music, and it's no different here. There are too many reasons why - pressure of time, other demands on us. And for us there are technical reasons as well - computers go wrong, connections cease to be available. All right, we can work up a dispute about anything, and there are always liable to be a few people who want to turn every and every discussion into a fight, but that's pretty superficial most of the time.

For a glimpse of what typical times on the Mudcat were like a few years agop I suggest people try the Wayback Machine - just stick it on your browser and see what I mean. (Though you can only do it when theeh Mudcat is running properly, not when you've come in through the backdoor, like today. Most of the time you find people saying very much the same things...

Lots of great songs about this kind of thing. For example Australian Henry Lawson's "Outside Track" - which is very likely on the DT, but I can't get at that today, what with teyh backdoor entry. Here's a link to it anyway

And here's the last verse of that, to encourage people to follow that link, because there's a lot of great stuff at the other end of the blue clicky:

And one by one, and two by two,
    They have sailed from the wharf since then;
I have said good-bye to the last I knew,
    The last of the careless men.
And I can't but think that the times we had
    Were the best times after all,
As I turn aside with a lonely glass
    And drink to the bar-room wall.