Agree whole-heartedly about Gainsborough, Mike - of course! :-) You may be right, but I fear the world has moved on and there are now many other activities that compete for people's time - TV not the least. If people don't Organise (and promote hard, especially) clubs can fail to fight their corner, and eventually fade from view. I've seen a good few close even in the short time I've been around (10 years). I guess my opinions are coloured by the very fact that I am new to the scene - and what I've found does not match the image that I carried in my mind since I originally frequented clubs back in the 70s. The lovely people at Britfolk (Pete Coe, actually) gave me a database of every club in the land about 5 years ago - and I've now spoken to (or tried to speak to) pretty much every one (and played at more than half). A score or more on the list were already dead when I started, and an other score or more have died since. Another score or more have given up booking guests, and perhaps the same number tell me they're struggling for one reason or another - and against this only a handful of new clubs have started (some of which closed again almost immediately).

Napper talks wistfully of the good old Dab Hand days, when you could do a whole week in JUST East Scotland, or Cornwall, or East Anglia, moving only 20 miles from club to club each day - with punters coming to gigs on consecutive nights and the Organisers collaborating to help arrange tours. Now it's more of a free-for-all - and sometimes we have to drive for four or more hours between gigs. And then when we get there, occasionally, even now, the place is almost empty (okay, okay - our fault for not being better players and more famous!), but it does make life hard - for us, and for the Organisers. It's partly an age thing - as frequently discussed elsewhere; as we, the folk club generation, get older we get more set in our ways, and less likely to try new things or adapt to a changing marketplace (and it IS a marketplace, even if only unpaid members attend - everything is). Maybe the days of making a living in the clubs are numbered (plenty think so) and maybe that's no bad thing, but the guest/floor-spot formula used to work so well, and it still does in many places - so with luck and a following wind enough clubs will survive to keep a few of us going for a little while longer. (At least till the lad leaves school and I can go back to Alderney)! Tom

(Strimmer's nearly ready btw).