Nice to hear from my old mate Alan Day. Hello, Al. I was also in GIGCB about 10 years ago. The second date I took my now-wife on was one of our gigs. She later confessed that she had considered binning me afterwards because my mates were so weird.

Sorry that things haven't improved at Cecil Sharp House. I played there several times with GIGCB and other bands. It's a great room but I never liked the place much, apart from the Library. The bar always seemed like a very bad student union bar in the 70s and there was always a lot of pettiness about concerning publicising other people's gigs. I'm reliably informed that the organiser of one of the regular 'themed' dance nights used to go round tearing down flyers for other venues holding similar themed nights until the organiser of the 'rival' event pulled him up on it and asked him to step outside. He apparently went running off like a puppy. (Allegedly).

This sort of occurrence, and the fact that there are apparently still people around who are prepared to behave like that, probably has at least as much to do with falling attendances as the location or the state of the building. I invited some friends to some gigs I played there and although they had a nice enough time, they weren't too keen on the place, the atmosphere or some of the people.

I live in Liverpool now and I'm still active in Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann. My daughter is learning Irish dancing and we recently had a very successful ceili at the St Michael's Irish Centre, where every Monday we have around 40 kids learning whistle, flute, accordion, fiddle, banjo and concertina. The Irish Minstrels branch in Glasgow has around 150 students and they usually walk off with most of the silverware at the All-Britain Fleadh. Why is English folk dancing apparently falling in popularity or is it the venue? And would the EFDSS be better off reinventing itself as a competitive, youth-oriented body like Comhaltas, promoting the music through local branches full of kids and young people?

If people young people get into the music, the dancing is often not far behind - and vice versa. This was part of the problem with the UK Cajun circuit. Dancers thought it was all about them and musicians started to get pissed off with them. At one point, the Cajun band I was in were apparently boycotted by something called the 'Cajun Dancers Association'. Can't say I noticed at the time. Oh well.

Shirley Collins, in her book about her travels in America with Alan Lomax, talks about Cecil Sharp House being a very forbidding and unwelcoming place in the 50s but emphasises that this is not her recent experience - and she should know. My own experience of the place when I lived in London was rather mixed. I often got the feeling that the EFDSS had succeeded in hanging on to the place but didn't really have any idea what to do with it.

As far as relocating is concerned, I think a lot of the problems with the area would affect the value of the site and how much EFDSS could expect to get for it. It might not be worth quite as much as you think. You could move to a more salubrious area but there's no guarantee that it would continue to be so in 20 years' time. My own feeling is that EFDSS should continue to hang on to the place if possible and maybe get someone from outside to sort out the bar and the catering. Maybe allowing drinks and food in the main room should be considered, along with some club-style seating like Vicar Street in Dublin and the option of table service (for a premium). This might have the effect of creating a more sociable atmosphere as well as attracting people who might not have come before.

It would also, not to put too fine a point on it, raise the tone of the place and remove some to the air of cheapness, shabbiness and 'making do' that characterised a lot of events there in my day. If I wanted to continue living in the 1970s I'd have moved to the West Midlands.

Fact is, you'll never fill the place if people don't want to go to dances there and they won't want to as long as it's such a shabby experience, if Alan's account of what it's still like is to be believed. I have no reason to doubt him. I think people will want to go there if they are familiar with folk music and dance and have positive experiences of it. That's where local activity and activity in schools comes in.

Looking at the folk scene, the number of young performers indicates to me that the folk community has largely succeeded in replenishing the supply of performers in a way that I would not have thought likely 20 years ago. However, it has not yet succeeded in replenishing the audience to anything like the same extent.

Answers on a postcard, please.

Nice to hear from you, Alan. Say hello to the guys for me.

I understand the CDs are still available. If anyone is interested, the first one is the best. That's the one I'm on.