DARLINGTON’S annual Spring Thing folkgathering happens this weekend at The Dolphin Centre, with a preliminary concert at The Copper Beech tonight with Steve Hicks and Lynn Goulburn. Then there’s a variety of concerts over the next few days, featuring the likes of Richard Digance, Willow Creek, Bert Draycott, Bram Taylor, Tony Martin and Dan Hands, Pete Abbot, Marie Little, Barrie and Ingrid Temple, Bernard Wrigley, Loose Connections and Flossie Malavialle.

Talking to festival organisers around the country, there is some anxiety about the year ahead, and what will happen if they are hit by similar wet conditions as in the previous two years. Even the most hardy festival-goer must be thinking along similar lines. But in the meantime, we can all keep warm in the local folk clubs, where there’s much on offer this week.

Flossie is at Washington’s Davy Lamp on Saturday and on Sunday there’s a rare visit by one of my own favourite singers, Martyn Wyndham Read to The Customs House in South Shields. Monday has Dogwatch at Stockton’s Sun Inn, and on Tuesday, Cramlington folk club welcome Tyneside songwriter Pete Scott to their new venue at The Concordia Leisure Centre.

BBC 4 has Richard Thompson in concert tomorrow night. It’s a rare treat to have such an up-close and personal view of a man whose performances are always a shot in the arm for songwriters, guitar players and folk fans around the world.

Meanwhile, I’m off with my Pitmen Poets chums to the sultry South, with some shows in Derbyshire before our final North-East outing at Alnwick Playhouse on April 5.