FOLKIES tend to get a bit of a poor press - particularly unfair on such a generally unassuming wouldn't-hurt-a-fly bunch of people.

All that finger-in-the-ear, tarradidle-hey-nonny-no, muesli-munching, Morris dancing, beards and sandals (and the blokes are no better, boo-boom) stuff must be very tiresome for the fine people that keep our arcane music and country ways alive.

So there'll be no stereotyping on this page today, if you don't mind, and if it's lazy caricatures you're after, then move along, please.

This year's Wimborne Folk Festival, by most accounts, was a great success, blessed with beautiful weather, although sadly blighted, as most market towns are these days, by pre-pubescent binge-drinkers giving it large.

I went, with my two youngest children, to something called a ceilidh at Queen Elizabeth School, to celebrate, safe in the bosom of my family, friends and like-minded people, the magic and mysteries of traditional dance.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I am to dancing (of any kind) what George W Bush is to world peace. I look forward to shaking my booty with as much fervour as a turkey counting the days to Christmas.

But traditional dancing ought to hold no fears for a former country boy like me. My earliest courting (ah, such a nice folkie-type word) was carried out at barn dances, for example. I'm no great shakes, but surely, I thought, I can still pull off a decent Gay Gordons, Pat-a-Cake-Polka, Dashing White Sergeant or Rampaging Red Squirrel (or did I imagine one of them?) So it came to pass that, in a steamy school hall, while everyone else frolicked about like spring lambs, I clomped and clumped like Frankenstein's monster on stilts on ice playing Twister. Let's just say, my Strictly Come Dancing application isn't in the post.

But that's not to imply the evening was a flop for me. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Because to see my son, not yet 14, and little girl, nearly seven, both gallivanting around with wide eyes and smiles, having a truly fantastic evening, was a sight to behold.

At a time when children in the UK are supposedly among the most miserable anywhere in the world, and the government is considering teaching happiness in schools, this really brought home to me the innocence of youth and the pleasure to be had from very simple things.

Instead of indulging our little treasures with PS-this and Wii-that and packing them off to their rooms to wallow in the misery of EastEnders all alone, perhaps we should consider re-erecting maypoles for their delight.

It's too late for me, though, I fear - although I do solemnly promise to practise my Demented Seagull before next years' ceilidh.