Ever since I started singing, at the Lowther Hotel down by the river in York, I have written songs. I played at the Black Swan in Goodramgate... at the Turks Head in Lincoln... somewhere I forget down in Sussex... the Belgravia Hotel in New Brighton...

I ran Folk Clubs in Lincoln and Wallasey and swore never to do it again. Keep up the good work, lads - I'll come and play but being an organiser is a thankless task and full of sorrow. I could tell you stories.

These days, I tend to play in dance bands and pubs for a living and folk clubs for the hell of it. Occasionally some fool books me to do a night, but my days of hunting for bookings and flogging my way around cold upstairs pub rooms, singing to three people and, on one notable occasion, a flatulent labrador in the vain search for financial stability and musical satisfaction are behind me.

I still enjoy singing, still enjoy playing, but I think being a peripatetic folksinger is probably an even worse job than the poor sods who run the clubs in the first place. At least they don't have to drive fifty miles home afterwards...

But I enjoy making people laugh with humorous songs with a bit of wit to them, and I enjoy the odd bit of outré politics - it seems years since folk music had any radical content to it. The nearest thing you tend to get these days to a protest song is someone singing Eric Bogle's musing on wars of the last century. Safe, safe, safe.

The liveliness has gone out of most of the music, and, for that matter, out of most of the musicians - most of whom now seem not even to bother learning their songs, but expect to find a music stand provided and good lighting so they can read their words. As well, of course, as a decent PA system so they don't have to learn to sing, either.

Jaundiced, that's what I am.

Anyway, as to the details, I play a stunning Manson guitar, made in October 1981 and sounding even better today than it did when I bought it. No piezo pickup - if it's a good acoustic guitar, that's what it's going to be, not a third rate Ovation. I play a Suzuki mandolin, a Hohner two row melodeon, a Jon Oxley electric fiddle, and also the acoustic fiddle he finally made me last year after years of pleading on my part, a Trevor James flute and an alto sax made by someone I can't remember and can't be bothered to go and look. There's a Yamaha electric piano in the front room and a Korg synth lying around somewhere and a few other guitars (a Samic solid acoustic, an Ibanez electric and a bass by someone who should have known better) dotted around the walls.

There's everything from ancient melodeons to that thing Australians play stuffed on top of the bookcases. Didgeridoo - I don't know how you spell it either. A couple more fiddles, a bowed psaltery, something unidentifiable but definitely Chinese and a Cajun box in A. I think that's it. There is a possibility of a magpie tendency here.

The loft is full of stuff, but we won't go into that, and anyway, it's not all mine.

But I do like music.