Diary Of A Busker Day 2540 Friday May 9th 2025 Winchester.
There’s a bloke at the top spot, with a cello and backing tracks playing Can’t Help Falling In Love – hey that’s one of mine! No one down at the crossroads, though, so that’ll do. I sell a CD to an American woman – ‘I always like to buy CDs from people I see when I’m on holiday.’ ‘Yes, I suppose it reminds you of the places you’ve been…a memory of your holiday,’ I said.
After 45 minutes a girl comes by and asks if she can interview me for a university project – it would only take a couple of minutes so I agree. She says she’ll come back in a couple of minutes and holds her fist out for mine to “bump” (I believe the terminology is), which I do, after hesitating for a second. ‘Fine, great,’ I say. After twenty minutes, she hasn’t come back but I can see her and another girl through the gap between the coffee pod and wall, interviewing someone else at the bend in Market Street. Ten minutes later, she’s back and ready for me.
Her name’s Megan and her helper with the tripod and camera is Alice. They set the camera up and start the questions – ‘How did you get interested in music? (started on the ukelele in 1971, got hooked for good after seeing David Bowie backstage footage video for Life On Mars? on Top Of The Pops in July 1973). What would you say to someone who was thinking of taking up busking? (say it’s not easy, there’s a lot of playing for sometimes not much money…but it’s never boring/meet people who come up and have a story, people you’ll only ever meet once/had to start a diary and couldn’t believe, through investigation, that there were no other similar documents)…and gave her a fair amount of my Life Story/Hard Luck Story which ended up taking at least 15 minutes.
At the end Megan seems to be happy and this time, perhaps picking up on my hesitation first time round, hold her hand out for a traditional “shake”, which I’ve no hesitation in doing!
Near the end of the hour and a half, a woman donates, saying ‘Buy some food’, as if I’m homeless! It happens every few months. It’s then back home for some grub then back out for another hour and a half but this time at the top spot where the takings were around £20, about the same as the first spot.