Dairy Of A Busker Day 2518 Monday March 31st 2025 Southampton.
Back again where it all started. Literally, because due to a young Spanish bloke halfway up the street, stumbling through Cavatina (we’ve all been there, mate!), I’m up at the top of the road, where Day 1 took place in October 2010. At least the sun’s out and this is the first day I’m without a coat – I’ve got my black Next jacket on and it’s also the first day with my new Fender strap, yellow and white to go with the white guitar, which now has slightly heavier gauge strings on (11-49) so now the high E doesn’t slip off the end of the fretboard during the pull-off at the beginning of the string bit at the end of Life On Mars?
Plenty of friendly people about…one bloke asks ‘Is that a Liverpool song?’ after Eleanor Rigby, which is something I never thought of. Two men at different times, stand a few feet away and film me. No donations but both say ‘Cheers, mate.’ A young, Sarah, woman in a wheelchair stops at the end of the set while I’m packing up to chat about more or less everything, then buys a CD. She hasn’t heard me, then says she likes Eric Clapton so I plug the guitar in and do the Layla end bit. I should have got someone to film me doing that yesterday when it was Derek’s 80th because I bet it would have got a load of views. Always too late on the uptake, me.
I packed up after an hour because a. I needed the toilet and b. the bloke down the road had disappeared and I wanted his spot, which indeed I got when I came out of the mall. When I was here awhile ago, I sold two CDs to a bloke who pointed his phone at me horizontally and (I think) he must have been recording me. He turns up today and does the same thing – not saying a word but just standing in front with his phone. After 15 minutes, he very slowly gets a tenner out of a wallet and takes some photos of it then puts it back, then produces another wallet, gets a tenner out of that one and by this time I’ve stopped whatever I was playing. He must have remembered what I play from the time before because he says ‘Here Comes The Sun?’ I say ‘of course’ then after that, he says ‘and Elvis?’ so I do that one. At the end he asks if he can buy the two CDs for his tenner. Now, I’d forgotten but this is what happened the last time, so I remind him he’s already got both CDs. ‘Yes, but these are for a friend.’ Fair enough!
I’m playing next to the entrance to Holland & Barrett and a few minutes before I pack up (an hour and a half here), the supervisor comes out and, fearing I’m going to be told off, I say ‘I’m off in a minute!’ But he’s fine, in fact he says ‘No, it’s OK, you’re a lot better than most of them, who play the same four or five songs over and over again’ and I’m thinking “yeah, that was me 15 years ago, right here!”
On the way back to the station, I cut through the mall and John Lewis and got the lift down to Level 0. When I got to the station I had 20 minutes before the train so I sat in the waiting room and glanced at the small selection of books on the shelf, for passengers to while away the time while train-waiting. Sod it, why not? I got the bookbox from my suitcase, got out a Volume 1 of the diary and put it on the shelf. I wonder who will pick it up? I wonder how long it will be there…