I don't feel I've have been combative. Maybe I have, but not intentionally so.

I think things change. The big change for me has been the availability of cheap instrumens. When I was a kid, a months wages wouldn't have paid for a decent playable guitar. Now you can get a decent playable guitar for twenty quid on gumtree.

Plus there are cheaper banjos, penny whistles, mouth organs, bodhrans and fiddles.

Also there is more tuition around. The Seegers, Josh White looked like magicians. Their techniques and abilities seemed other worldly.

And I suppose that accounts for some of the differences. We are not perhaps in as much reverence as we should be for the visionary pioneers of the folk music revival. Their beautiful instruments and abikities are more familiar to us.

I wouldn't like anyone to think I was not respectful of another person's efforts to pass on something good to the world.