IB - we agree on the stotties but "my son and daughter - 21 & 27 respectively - who both still live there, and who both, though brought up in very folkie household, are avid fans of hip-hop and have no time for folk music in any shape or form! How cool's that?"...as ice.

My children are native born English people, WAV; and like all native born English people, they have the free will to choose what Englishness means to them. They too know more about Traditional English Folk Music than you ever will, but - and get this - they simply don't like it. And why the hell should they like it? It's not as if it was ever part of the wider cultural context of working-class Tyneside in which they grew up. It's just a remnant of something old, songs now sung by middle-aged middle-class enthusiasts in the museum of their own imaginings. A good place to be for some of us perhaps, but for most people it's complete and utter nonsense.

Culture is not the absolute commodity you seem to think it is - it's not something you can buy your way into, or yet wish yourself a part or even a practitioner of. Culture is that which life is lived by - in terms of experience, expression, communication, community and celebration - and, as such, it is the default reality of everything we are. As one who supposedly majored in anthropology, you really should understand this; just as you should also understand that what you have there isn't culture at all, English or otherwise, rather the misbegotten spoils of an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for which I really do hope you eventually get the help you so obviously need.

"I am still learning what it means to be a Traddy." (IB)...we agree on that too.

I don't think we do agree on it though, WAV - because learning is the key to life; it's an ongoing process that begins at birth and only comes to an end when we die. Sadly, and very disappointingly, you've made it your Life's Work to be the single exception to this most glorious human rule. You're the poet who no longer writes poetry, the folk singer who no longer learns songs, the traveller who no longer travels; the hapless idealogue who assumes that all the nonsensical crap he wrote years ago is still somehow relevant, even unto himself. You reached the terminus of your life long ago; copyright 2003; at which point you stopped dead, whilst the world kept on moving, transfiguring itself with each new glorious dawn.

You've set yourself against humanity - in your thinking, your ideas, your dogma, your rhetoric; you've walled yourself in behind your own entrenched philosophy convinced that you've stumbled on an absolute truth. Truth is the very last thing it is; it doesn't even bear scrutiny on any level before people see it for the bilious racist totalitarian sexist misanthropic evil it actually is. You do this in the name of Traditional Music, you even do it in the name of Christianity, but at its heart is a big black devilish hole sucking the life from everything you claim to so love and cherish.

The solution is a simple one; de-clutter! Delete the lot and wake up to reality. Come out and play, join us in the real world before it really is too late.