Bit of a cop out. The universality clause. Of course its true, but when you look back what footprints has our generation left in the sand of folksong. Nothing much that tells about the sort of life I've led, or most of the people round me.

And it comes down in the end to that sort of spiritual degeneracy that feels like our generation of English folksingers are in the Edinburgh Wool Shop of life, rather than walking the pavements of our cities where most of us live - in fact its the only sort of stuff that gets on folk radio.