Diary Of A Busker Day 2444 Saturday September 21st 2024 Winchester.
A busy Saturday afternoon and the Buttercross is taken so I’m through the alley and into The Square in no time at all.
It had stopped raining an hour before but the pavement’s still damp so I’ll have to give the back of the case a good clean when I pack up because I’ve got a cream jacket on and that case is going on my back when I set off.
One thing I can’t be doing with is idiots asking me directions to local places when I’m playing. It happens today, a bloke – ‘Do you know the way to The Black Boy pub, mate?’ Not even an ‘excuse me, kind sir.’ I just said ‘no’, not even ‘I’m very sorry, no I don’t.’
As usual, the double-neck gets a load of attention. A young bloke comes up and asks if it’s an SG, so I give him a short run down of it’s history – it was 2012 and I couldn’t afford an Epiphone double-neck (there was no point in even THINKING about a Gibson) but found a cheap kit you could buy from America, so I bought that, thought the plain wood was a bit boring so I painted it. Well, Joanne did most of the front – I did the easy bits and the Prisoner thing on the back.
Anyway, this young guy actually has an Epiphone double-neck but says it’s so heavy, he can only stand up with it for half an hour, which made me feel quite pleased with myself because today I was standing up quite a lot and at least for half an hour at some point AND my double-neck’s got a vibrato unit on it so it’s got to be heavier than an Epiphone. “My dad’s bigger than your dad!”
Oh, I almost forgot, a very strange thing happened today…or rather DIDN’T happen. Claire never turned up. I kept expecting to see her walking through the alleyway from the Buttercross, as that’s where I was facing, but nothing. I mean, she must have been about. This must be the first time in weeks that I’ve not seen her. Very strange. Maybe there was a bus strike and she couldn’t get the No.1 from Otterbourne.