I'm afraid that a few people here have managed to hitch the donkey to the cart wrong end forward.

It's not the younger people leaving folk clubs, song circles, and such because geezers like me spend too long drooling on their song books and crib sheets, it's the singers (like me, and Bob Nelson, and several others who've spoken up on this thread—including a number of younger singers!!) who have taken the time to learn the songs they intend to sing before going to the meetings. And who, then, have to wait around while singers new to the club or circle waste everybody's time leafing through song books and three-ring binders, trying to decide what they're going to sing, then dither and mumble their way through a song that, not only have they not bothered to learn and obviously don't know what it's even about, but they can't even be bothered to choose ahead of time. So we leave and form groups of our own. It's the singers who like the songs well enough to learn them that get fed up with the people who can't be bothered.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with both Howard Jones and Musket.

Sorry! But them's my sediments.

Don Firth