You might have to search a bit harder to find the good times than you might have then, at some times in some places, but it's all there, and more than ever. So far as the music goes, there's probably more of it, and better, and more chance to play it - it's just that it's not plugged into the music industry, and that's a good thing really.

Maybe it's harder to kid yourself that turning round the world for the better is going to be a simple quick thing, but there are people out there working on that, and it's a long haul. In some ways the mainstream world looks uglier than ever, but especially for people involved in this kind of music there's a stronger and healthier counterculture. And it's much less sexist and racist and unaware of thing like people with disabilities being excluded and so forth.

As for things like terrorism - well, all those years we had the four-minute warning and the H-bombs hanging over us, and Mutual Assured Destruction. The worst scenarios people imagine now tend to be a nuclear device in a big city - that doesn't even compare with all-out nuclear war, which we don't worry too much about these days.

And when it comes to being in a time when things open up, and things are happening for the first time, that was true about the 60s in a lot of ways - but it's true today, of different things, and sometimes of the same things coming round again.

For example, there's this place. There was nothing at all like the Mudcat back then, linking us to people to exchange music and thoughts with all round the world, and opening up ways of getting together with them as well, from time to time.