HERE are a few thoughts dangled together likes notes on a musical score.

Back in June, Sahra Halgan (above) featured on Later, the long-running BBC2 music show. Last night she appeared at the Crescent in York, billed as “an activist and singer from Somaliland” who sings about freedom. She was once also a “gun-toting nurse”.

This striking last fact was mentioned on Later. Sahra told Jools Holland she hadn’t really been a nurse during the civil war (still on-going) but had helped as best she could while singing to the people she treated.

Somaliland, and I did not know this before now, is an autonomous but unrecognised region that broke away from Somalia in East Africa in 1991. This explains why Sahra Halgan appeared on stage holding a Somaliland flag. She also spoke about her country in halting English with a sprinkling of French, having lived in Lyon after leaving her homeland.

All of which you either need to know or you don’t. What you do need to know is that she is a tremendous singer whose freedom songs have great power and charm, and roll around in barrel of banging rhythms. Her ear-punching three-piece band features a crazily good guitarist who mixes African soul and punky rock, plus a drummer and a keyboard player.

A powerful performer, and one of the best gigs in ages. We went with a friend from Leeds whose passion for live music has survived into his seventies, a dedication to be admired.

Smallish local venues such as the Crescent support musicians and without such places, local live music would dwindle and die.

Some York venues are even more compact, notably FortyFive Vinyl Café, a music-themed coffee bar that some nights turns into a lively venue. We’ve been to a few gigs there, mostly country as that’s the house special. Two weeks ago there was something different with the flamenco guitarist Samuel Moore, who conjured the shapes and spaces of Spain on one nylon string guitar.

Like everyone else who appears at this cherished little venue, Samuel ended by thanking the owners, Ian and Rebecca, for helping to sustain live music.

Not everyone can afford big venue prices. Last time I went to the Barbican in York it cost £55 to see Richard Thompson – and that’s not even expensive for nowadays.

Silly money seems to be involved in the reunion of those squabbling Mancunian brothers; even sillier money was splashed out on Taylor Swift tickets this year, although not by me. Her appeal remains a mystery, but ageing folk-loving jazz fans who dabble in classical music are not exactly her target market.

You may have noticed that certain newspapers and broadcasters have been getting in an absurd tizzy over whether the government intervened to give Taylor Swift a police escort when she performed in London.

All part of a mass attempt to throw mud at Sir Keir Starmer about anything and everything, including meeting Swift. In a sensible country, this wouldn’t even be a story, let alone a ‘scandal’.

Should you feel like indulging in political tit-for-tat, feel free to mention that Margaret Thatcher used to snuggle up to Jimmy Savile.

Still, there is always Have I Got News For You to cheer us up. I must have watched just about every edition of this now-aged TV news quiz. That now marks me as aged, too.

Last Friday’s programme took the unwise decision to feature the ejected Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns as a guest. She was dreadful, as could have been predicted by a one-eyed sparrow from Morley. Still, GBNews did its feeble best to stir up a row about BBC bias, even though Jenkyns stumbled lamely and wasn’t funny at all.

Politicians rarely amuse on that show; hosts Ian Hislop and Paul Merton nearly always do. Merton is a quirky wit to treasure, while Hislop is a journalist who turns his basilisk gaze on the players and fools in that week’s news pantomime.

Life would seem smaller without them.