Talking about new blood - at the acoustic place in Somerset I mentioned before, last night three A-Level music students appeared as their practicals are next week and the pub's landlady had encouraged them to come and get some performance practice.

One chap did a bit of classical guitar - Bach and Villa-Lobos. The other two did a Radiohead acoustic song together, then the one who looked like a young Roger Waters with his underpants six inches above his belt line did a complex, varied and subtle instrumental arrangement of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Sleeps" and the other - who had a great voice and hair that flopped down over his eyes like the Dulux dog - did a song, the name of which I forget, which closed the evening.

And very well-received they were by the assembled crumblies mostly old enough to be their grandparents, despite the provocative display of copious hair (one older folkie who did a trad acapella ballad said he'd thought up to then that the club had a minimum age limit of 45...).

A couple of weeks ago the club's special Wednesday guest was James Chadwick (there are several) who's about 20. So as a non-peforming audience member, I do like to see variety and the odd new youngster as well as the venerables.

And it would be good if a couple more younger types showed up in the audience as well... it must be a bit odd for teenagers and 20-somethings to perform in front of listeners generally 2x or 3x (or in one case 4x) their age. (A couple of months ago a rather beautiful 20-something did her song Winter, which includes lines like "You say we're still young/ Our lives have just begun/ Beauty will leave me and time wear us down/ I don't want to grow old/ I don't want to die" and her audience of greyheads 30 or 40 years nearer the grave were no doubt thinking, yup, sure don't want that to happen to us).