³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

We usually get down to around mid afternoon on the Thursday. That's so we can get all our stuff into the portacabins that will be our home for the next four days. Once we have ranked up all the chocolate and biscuits I wander round trying to convince myself that it was a whole year ago that I last walked through the tent with all the banjos and hippy stuff for sale and not just last week. Once back at it seems that I've never been away. 'Where did the year go?' I ask myself as I see the same faces, the same backstage lads, the same food vendors and the same security guys. Perhaps I ought to arrange to have my ashes scattered here so that I can haunt the place permanently.

I was, I have to say, mightily struck by the range of hats on the hippy stalls this year and definitely feel a Cambridge hat experience coming on. As Mark Radcliffe pointed out, Cambridge is not Cambridge without me buying a wizard/gangsta/tea-planter's/hobbit hat which I wear for the four days and then leave somewhere after too many glasses of fermented grapes. We shall see.

High spots of the first day for me were in the club tent - brilliant playing and fine singing. They were followed by the equally good (I think the name is Greek for vacuum cleaner) who had the crowd up and jumping throughout their set.

Stage 1 is where all the big names appear, yet it is often on the smaller stages of Stage 2 and the Club Tent where the really great stuff happens. And on Stage 2 last night, myself and several thousand other people had our cultural lives vastly enriched by the antics of nine Cornishmen and a Yorkshire man who go collectively under the name of . All of them have a strong connection with the sea - either as fishermen or as lifeboat crew - and from just meeting up to have a bit of a sing in their home town of every Friday night they have become something of a showbiz sensation over the last six months with their album going straight into the Top Ten and appearances at the Albert Hall and Glastonbury.

All of which strikes me (and them, I dare say) as slightly ironic because they are simply a group of ten friends who sing old sea songs with great gusto and total sincerity. They had us all entranced, both with their singing and the patter between the songs.

Like all great entertainers they love their music but also know how to tickle an audience's funny bone. I felt, as I watched them, that I was looking at something timeless and great. There is said to be a film in the pipeline somewhat along the lines ofÌý with actors playing the fishermen and some kind of a love element. The wry twist at the corner of Jon Cleave's mouth as he told the audience this also told us that no matter what, the nine Cornishmen and the Yorkshire man will be doing what they do for years to come, either on the big stages of the world or on the harbour of Port Isaac. That, after all, is what folk music is all about.