For us Feral Folk this is par for the course; my friend Clive, for example, regularly records his superlative singing of traditional songs under an overpass on the tow-path Grand Union Canal in Edinburgh, complete with cylists, dogwalkers & other bemused passers-by. It's the acoustics you see - like me singing up the boat-lake overflow pipes on Fleetwood Beach (check The Great Selkie O' Sule Skerry Here) where I admit there is rather less by the way of human traffic. Even when I'm not recording, I'm singing, especially if the acoustics are good - the piss-reeking stairwells of the Market Carpark in Preston are pretty good - good for Jew's Harps too, a small collection I carry with me everywhere I go. Rachel & I practice our harmonies whilst out walking which is something maybe a little different but in this day and age singing has become a matter of performance rather than pass-time, leading to the sort of self-consciousness that might silence us when we're out and about on our own. Do people sing whilst pottering about in the garden, sowing the Seeds of Love?

Memorably, I once heard a young lady burst into song on the Tyne & Wear Metro as the tram entered Longbenton Station: there's Denton and Kenton - A U Hinney Burd - an' canny Lang Benton - A U A - but she was, I fear, away with the fairies. Needless to say I joined in on the chorus after which she latched onto me for the rest of the day until the effects of the mushrooms she'd been given by friends had worn off. Weird thing was, when I asked her where she'd got the song she said she'd never heard it before, that it was just triggered by the name of the station, which gave me pause to ponder just how deeply embedded these things can be.

Today were off to visit the Viking graves in Heysham, followed on by a jaunt to Morecambe (The Naples of the North according to the postcard on our bathroom wall); now Morecambe is one place one can sing whilst walking down the street and no one will bat an eyelid.

Who'll go to Morecambe? Who'll go to Morecambe?
Who'll go to Morecambe - to Morcambe with me?
I, said the young man in the care of the community,
I'll go to Morecambe, to Morecambe with thee!