More than 30 years had gone since last I saw Pablo. He lived then in the high flats overlooking the docks. Everyone called him Pablo because he looked like a young soldier home from some Mexican revolution – with the hat, gaudy shirt, neckerchief, black hair and the slow-staring brown eyes, which settled in your soul, like the picture of a gambling man rocking lazily on his chair while checking the aces and jacks in his hand.

The stare was still there, when I saw him outside the church, as the big black car pulled up with the coffin and the mourners stepped out. That was the moment for people to lift hands from their pockets and stop talking and shuffling their feet on the gravel, so that the dignity deep in each of us could rise and gather in respect and affection.

We had been a happy, roarin’, wild-sown crowd, all those years back; young men and women from different backgrounds, joined in their enthusiasm for folk/blues music – yet only a list of names, if you don’t see their faces in the smoke.

The prince and princess had been the brother and sister, Hal and Joy Crabtree. They were blessed with many talents and a magnificent surname, squeezed from the ancient earth of England. With their pal, Derek Marsden, they had been a trio in the 1960s and then they became a duo – guitars slung over their shoulders, heads back with full red lips stretched wide, while the songs of sorrow and triumph soared around us.

Inside the coffin was Betty, loving mother and wife, a nurse and charity worker of immense kindness and professionalism, whose goodness and high-charged humanity had spread to thousands of others. But her God, in whom she had placed so much trust, had called her early.

So fine words, sometimes funny, always loving, were spoken. Her husband Donny, a guitarist of natural brilliance, now under a shock of white hair, sat before the altar, alone on his chair, but with her just the same, to sing their favourite song, Sandy Denny’s Meet on the Ledge – “When my time is up I'm gonna see all my friends, meet on the ledge, we're gonna meet on the ledge, if you really mean it, it all comes round again”.

At first, it was quavery and uncertain and then his guitar howled in the nave, as his swelling voice lifted the sentiment, louder and louder, through all the clouds and into the opening blue.

What happened to everyone from the Club 800 in Birkenhead? Well, some remained close, others parted. Some married and had children, others didn’t. Hal died four years ago. Now, efforts are being made to collect photographs, cuttings and early recordings to see if there’s enough material for a memorial DVD in remembrance of wonderful times.

And then Pablo told the parable of the guitar. Some years back a boy had asked him if he could have it. Mention was made of money, but Pablo said there would be no charge, if the boy learned to play a tune. This was done and the boy took the guitar, but he died young and now his mother is learning to play it. Eventually she will pass it on to someone else. Pablo hopes that no-one will ever have to pay for the guitar. In that way it will become a symbol.

We were like that then, for a few dreaming years, young and pulsing, praising the sun and singing under the moon. Of course, businessmen make millions of pounds out of the songs of others, but their true value can never be measured in money. For the song offers hope to those who sing it, not to those who sell it.

But let us return to the domestic front. “What’s that you’re writing?” asked my wife, who has brought me so much happiness. A smile floated in the lovely turquoise of her eyes, as she picked up the sheet of paper. “But a song doesn’t always offer hope to those who have to hear it,” she said, looking at me, her tone suddenly touched by raw suffering. “And it could be measured in money. Drop a coin into my Christmas box every time you groan through Seven Golden Daffodils. Now that’s fair.”

LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk