When I was a kid at Leighton Park School in Reading,   my posh middle class friends had nearly all visited Les Cousins folk club in Greek Street, Soho - they had seen guys like Donovan, Paul Simon and Bert Jansch

By the time I got to college, I was aching to go there.When I started visiting Cousins as a college student - the star turns were ragtime guitarists - people like Ralph McTell and Stefan Grossman. Usually with a couple of trusty friends we would hitch up to London down the A1 on a Friday night - about 100 miles. We'd catch the 7-11.30 show.   Then walk round London all night and all the next day, until Cousins opened its doors again at 7pm. From midnight there was an all night session til 6am.

We slept in National Porttrait Gallery, or went endlessly round the circle line on the tube, trying to sleep a little.

Nearly everybody assumed we were there to get out of our heads on drugs. I don't say we weren't quite stupid enough to do that - if we'd ever been offered drugs there. However - the intoxication was more to do with being near something important happening. Personally I hoped by some kind of osmosis, I would become an artist like the fabulous musicians that I saw there - people like Wizz Jones, Davy Graham, Ralph McTell, Stefan Grossman, Al Stewart, Spider John Koerner and Derek Brimstone.

Excerpt from Grantham Days Page on my website http://www.bigalwhittle.co.uk/