The missus and I had a great time at Sidmouth and in our view the week was a success, Certainly Eddie Upton thought so, and he and Folk Southwest put in a lot of hard work to make it so, by bringing together the various disjointed bits of the organisation to form a coherent team. I didn't really miss the arena shows as we saw some cracking performances in the Marquee and the Manor Theatre - Bellowhead were magnificent as usual, the New Scorpion Band were great and I really enjoyed the Demon Barber Roadshow - OK in the latter band the bass was too loud and you couldn't hear the words of the songs, but did you see that rapper dance! Superb.

The wife and I got some songs in and I even gave a talk with video clips. There is talk of my helping out to help organise the talks for next year or to help set up some ballad sessions - anyone up for that?

It was good to see the food outlets of the town being used rather than the marquee food, but a) Sidmouth caterers have to learn to give better customer service: half hour waits for food or waiting 10 minutes before having your order taken are unacceptable and b) Sidmouth caterers do not do healthy - it's chips with everything.

That said, as a people's festival, it was a great success - lots of singing, playing, dancing etc and the promise of even better next year.

Gwilym