However much you might like folk clubs, there are two awkward realities.

Firstly, on present trends, no gathering of that sort is likely to be feasible for a year or more - not just folk clubs, but weddings, Pilates classes, church services, Masonic rituals, the Womens Institute or big screen football. This will be a more drastic hiatus than has ever happened in wartime. It isn't just the clubs and their venues that will have a problem getting started again, many professional performers (and probably all the older ones) will call it a day.

Secondly, unlike wartime, there is an alternative that does provide a sustainable medium for many kinds of music, and which is particularly well suited to folk, given a bit of adjustment by performers and listeners. The internet wasn't around for people living through the London Blitz or the siege of Sarajevo, but it is now. For the foreseeable future it's all we've got, and it's going to change our expectations; we will get used to listening and performing alone, and we will learn to do without the performers who fall silent. Whatever happens when this is over will be shaped by what we are about to go through.