When I say I sing English Folk Songs, I mean folk songs in English, broadly speaking, picking up on variations from America, Australia & - where's that shanty about Essequibo River from? I sing them in my own voice however, a Northumbrian brogue, tinged with Scots & Irish & vernacular Tyneside, which, according to my wife, it's getting stronger since we moved to Lancashire back in September...

I know WAV personally, we have good friends in common & he makes a canny contribution to any amount of singarounds where it's his Australian accent that kicks it off, even when he's performing his own chants. I might hope that despite his admitted attempts to lose his accent as part to his repatriation, he comes to recognise it as one of the real strengths, a unique selling point indeed, of his own evident uniqueness. There's so many Traditional English Folk Songs in the Australian tradition, and so many great Australian folk songs anyway. Even songs like Peter Bellamy's setting of Henry Lawson's Glass on the Bar would take on another light if sang with a genuine Aussie brogue. You can't fake these things after all.

It's one thing being proud of a culture, but first, me thinks, we must be proud of ourselves, and of each other. God knows there's room enough.