Ah, those good old days :-) But the French do seem to have a bit less of a generation gap - judging by all those progs on TV with older singers joined by younger ones and very mixed age audiences.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

How true. Strolling round my quarter, I came to a public square with a poster listing half a dozen names with time slots. I noted that there was a guy twiddling knobs on the stage as some recorded music blared out, and assumed he was filling in between the musicians. Then he started blah-blahing into his microphone, and the truth dawned.

Other than that, there was a band at a bar near my place playing prog-ish rock that I didn't recognise, another that I could hear from my terrace playing anglo-american standards from the 70s, pleasantly unremarkable. I like the fact that for a lot of amateur groups, this is their big annual concert. But not much turnover in the repertoire.

Oh, and my choir, which traditionally sings in a public place on this date, didn't get awarded a slot this year by the municipality. Not enough places, you see.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}