We've got ourselves a new poet on board the Mudcat, Harlow's finest - Simon. He's the kind of poet who prefers folk sessions and singarounds to poetry readings. Leaps in when there's a quiet moment and surprises people, and it works.

I've been telling him about the Mudcat, and now he's just turned up with a PM saying he'd just joined and wanted to check up on how to go about telling people about a forthcoming concert in Harlow. He's set it up in a couple of months, in support of the fight to stop the new licencing rules destroying the session tradition. The point is, it isn't just music under threat, it's anything that can be termed a performance.

If you were at Broadstairs Folk Festival you might have run into Simon, since he was their official folk poet. Or you might have hear his song about President Lincoln and the letter from the theatre management to Mrs Lincoln after that unfortunate incident.