I'm just back. Had a good time and will most likely be back next year. Couldn't do quite as much as we'd planned since Marion's recovering from a stroke - she gets tired very easily, so I had to get her back to the flat when that happened, and do more domestic stuff than intended. Still, we wouldn't have been anywhere else.

Highlights: meeting up with Max (who is a wonderfully laid-back person to share a house with) and the two events I went to that Johnny Handle was involved in:

- a session on mining songs, with what for me was the most moving song of the week, an unaccompanied song about what mining does to your body and spirit, written and sung by a man called Paddy in a purple shirt with an expressive bass voice - I don't know who Paddy was but I hope to hear from him again.

- an English tunes session, which went well beyond simply leading tune sets to give ideas about musical stagecraft.

Anahata's English tune session was also a great example in how to communicate to players without saying a word. He can make his instrument do the talking just by hitting accents in the right places.

Nice hearing so much English music for a change. It gradually came through to me that one distinctive thing about it is that it scales up. Sessions of similar size doing Irish music are usually a mess (as exemplified by every pub doing it that I looked into that week), and for Scottish or Shetland music they can sound rather dogged with everybody trying to do exactly the same thing (think of strathspey and reel societies). But for English music, the very strong beat allows for a wider variety of instruments to contribute in a wider variety of ways. It can use an orchestral-sized group without sounding in the least like a classical orchestra.

We figured that our season tickets just about broke even. The only real advantage was getting ahead of the on-the-spot buyers for sold-out events.

Of which there were too many. Not sure what they can do about it. I hate queueing so we may just get on-the-spot tickets next year and accept that we may not get in to the most popular events.

Some things I didn't expect:

- lots of French music. (Would have helped if the people running the European music had said that that was what they were overwhelmingly interested in - I could have boned up on some).

- lots of unusual instruments. I didn't expect to be in a lineup featuring my stuff (odd enough), phonofiddle, trombone, and contrabass concertina (like a large black hatbox enclosing an angry bonsaied hippo).

- zillions of spoons (thanks to Jeff Warner's workshop, I think) and hardly any bodhrans (maybe they stayed in the Irish session pubs all week).

- one of the chippies was crap. Looked great until you actually got the food (mushy cod and chips that tasted like they'd been reheated). On the other hand the Greedy Pig in Flowergate is wonderful.

- Dracula tat everywhere.

- the festival office is in a lousy location. Parking was all full up around there, and if you were coming by train it was a huge grunt up the hill. It would help if the Wailer was distributed to at least one point near sea level (the tourist information office?).

- I don't think I have ever been anywhere where there have been so many disabled people - negotiating massed crutches in a pub session was a new experience. I can't imagine why all those people with mobility problems pick such a disabled-unfriendly place to visit, but if they have any ideas about how to make it easier (short of bulldozing the hills flat) maybe they should contribute them.

- hardly any drunks. In a comparable Scottish event, there would be lubricated locals and stocious folkies littering the whole town. The only drunk folkies I saw were Scottish people I knew from back home or country & western types.

- the cheapest beer in town is at a place I'd never have thought of. Is that how the Tories recruit new members?

- it was all far friendlier than I'd thought it would be.

With one exception. Some of the people at the two Mudgather events were unwilling to recognize the existence of anybody they didn't know already. Hey, when somebody walks into a gathering and obviously knows Dick, Susan and Max, it's rather likely they're a Mudcatter, isn't it? And maybe might want to be asked when the singaround turn comes round, or when you're compiling a list of who's there?