The Whitby Folk Week seems rather light on traditional sea-songs and shanty singers as far as can be seen - which isn't that far as the organisers refuse to release the programme of events and want to extort a £4 fee from people who may be just mildly interested to see who is on and whether it might be worth going to Whitby at all.

Personally, that's the kind of attitude that makes me inclined to give the event a miss altogether, even though I like Whitby. However, I do like sea songs and East Yorkshire's premier singer-songwriter of this genre is going to be at several of the singarounds, having gone up from Hull on Tuesday.

Jim Radford recently won the Scarborough SeaFest "Song for the Sea" competition (again) with his latest composition "The Merchant Seaman" (a tribute to the WWII merchant sailors - of which he was one) and it would be a shame to miss this as there are no recordings of this song available yet (Jim's earlier song, "The Shores of Normandy", was recorded by the late Rod Shearman and is also on a fundraising CD for the Normandy Veterans's Association).

Maybe I'll toddle up to Whitby for the Friday evening sessions after all.