Diary Of A Busker Day 2521 Saturday April 5th 2025 Winchester.
I’ve come into town quite late (4:30), no one’s at the top spot but I’m wondering if The Square might be better as there should be lots of people at the tables and outside The Old Vine and Eclipse…and there are. The only problem is the spot’s taken by my old mucker Rick Tarrant, on his own it seems. The good news is he’s leaving in half an hour so…back to The Buttercross, where the coinage is steady; nothing too notable apart from a fiver.
Around halfway through, two young chinese women across the road listen to Cavatina, one comes over in the middle bit which I always have to give my utmost attention, and asks if I would like a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. Unfortunately this totally breaks my concentration because I’m now thinking, if I answer in the affirmative, the next question will be ‘and is that with or without milk?’ followed by ‘sugar?’ so it’s not just a question of saying ‘Yes, please.’ I manage to blurt out ‘hang on a minute’ and she waits patiently while I finish the piece, then we can have the conversation. ‘Hot chocolate, thank you very much!’ They both then disappear into Cafe Nero and I reckon they’ll be awhile because it’s Saturday and there’s always a queue there…15 minutes later, they emerge with not just the drink but a packet of two caramel waffles (I’ll have those later at home!) People are too good to me sometimes.
As usual, I stayed there longer than I intended and an hour and 20 minutes before I packed up and headed to The Square, Rick now long gone. It’s also less crowded but still a decent amount of peoploids outside the restaurants and bars and coming and going up and down Market Street and into the cathedral grounds. Unfortunately there’s no money in it, and when I say “no money”, I mean it, literally…well, apart from 2.50 in euro coins, I acquire zero in GBP. Maybe Rick cleaned them out. So I was there 40 minutes and got sweet FA from anyone…apart from the kind foreign currency donation (which bumps the holiday fund up to 9 euro 30 cents). People of Winchester, for shame!
Another van attempted to reverse into me while I was packing up but it wasn’t quite as dramatic as yesterday as the van was a lot smaller.