Dear Ay Up... or whoever you are... your comments about Jim Moray intrigue me... has it ever occurred to you that Jim may not have _wanted_ to be booked for the festival?? Artists too like to have their hols I have no doubt ... I have the feeling that I had read his own comments somewhere else to the effect that his touring etc this year was taking a back seat to other projects he had running in his life. And anyway, as pointed out, he did appear ... summoned from a swim on the beach by mobile phone at short notice to appear in place of Eliza Carthy who had been stricken down with illness, and then repairing back to the beach immediately afterwards.

As to "nothing for the young" looking at the programme there seemed to be any number of events specially designed for the very young, and the Shooting Roots age group. In addition, during the week I was mixing with quite a few young people who were happily joining in with us old fuddie duddies. I was involved in one evening session at the Volunteer nattering to a 17 year old fiddler (there with his better known dad), who didn't seem to be finding it a deadly chore to mix in with us lot; had grand chat with a couple of young morris dancers who were "locked out" of the folk club at the Woodlands at the same time as I was, and was made aware that some of their friends were having a Pimms party on the campsite; shared a singing session in the Bedford at stupid o'clock at which two extremely young singers (one male, one female) both of whom were VERY good didn't seem to have any difficulty in associating with us crinklies. And it was only too obvious that there was a completely different scene going on up at the Bulverton ... wish I could have been at the Glory Strokes event on the Saturday night... I'd love to see/hear some heavy metal ceilidh going on... maybe another time.

As Ruth said, Sidmouth is and always has been more than one festival ... it has numerous sub-sets going on within the overall whole. Dancers dance, singers sing, session players do their own thing, and those who don't "DO" put their bums on seats at concerts, and the sub-sets don't necessarily have any cross-overs. There is also a young person's thing going on that people like me are aware of but don't get involved in. So your Festival and mine, or Ralph's or Ruth's, and our perceptions of the whole are all likely to be very very different. I wouldn't presume to comment on provision for the young apart from to say that all of the young people (teens and twenties) that I spoke to during the week (and later this week back at home0 seemed to have been having a great time!