Thanks Gervase - I'm amazed. You are certainly one of those whom I would hope catch my drift, but I always assume that at Mudcat nobody does. However, I must say I think jOhn is pretty good value, on balance. (OK, I admit it took me quite a while to reach this conclusion.) I certainly warmed to his robust defence of himself after Amergin's unpleasant comments.

What happened to Roger in Sheffield? Maybe Kat knows, as I seem to recall they had some rapport? He was only a few miles up the road from me but I never got to meet him. He seems to have disappeared off the radar around the same time as the demise of the Harlequin in Sheffield, whose sessions he attended.

On the other side of the coin, I am delighted to have discovered, only today, that Michael K/MK/Michael K etc lived on in the cafe as Justa Picker. My own visits are now too infrequent for me to have noticed the transition. Anyway, I can now go and order Justa Picker's acclaimed CD knowing that I will actually be getting Michael Kaye's phenomenal fingerpicking. (Not to mentioned Rick Fielding's mandolin and dobro.) Apparently I will also be supporting Mudcat in the process.