Diary Of A Busker Day 2545 Friday May 16th 2025 Winchester.
The Buttercross is taken but The Square is reasonably diner-populated…but after 25 minutes there’s been zero donations. The only things of note was a man who walked past and shouted at the top of his voice “AAAAAHHHHHHH!” which really startled me, and secondly, a young woman on the bench near the museum who smiled at me a couple of times before she walked off towards the high street. I’m about to pack up and venture to pastures new when this woman comes back and puts a fiver in the case, thanking me for entertaining her and her friend this year – they were on holiday from Italy – and they’re going back on Monday. That was really nice and I decided to carry on a bit longer, which was good as another two fivers came my way, both from a group of four outside Three Joes. One of them came up and requested Cavatina, and for once I was able to carry out the request.
I ended up doing an hour and ten minutes for a total of £18, then off to the top spot, now vacant…and the first person who came up was the young woman from three days ago who I gave the two CDs to after the technical QR code breakdown. She owed me only £15 but insisted on giving me a £20 note, so kindness does pay, to the tune of a fiver!
…for around 20 minutes, there’s a man and woman standing talking a few feet in front of me. The man is mid-thirties, quite big with a pony tail and nose ring. He also has a tattoo on the back his left leg, just above the ankle. It’s a cartoon duck with the words FUCK THE ABOVE TO FIND OUT. Now, I’m a very curious sort of bloke but I’m not THAT curious!
Now for some sad news. A dishevelled, rough-looking, bearded man on crutches comes up with a black dog – ‘You wrote about Frank telling you to use the hand-driers to keep your hands warm in the winter.’
‘Sorry? (then I remember that was one of the old diary extracts the Chronicle printed way back in 2011)…oh right, yeah.’
‘Frank’s dead.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Frank Williams – he played the accordion. This is his dog. I’m a friend of his, I found him. His place had been ransacked. His funeral was on Wednesday, he was cremated. He had some relatives there. One came over from Australia. I know he said you wrote about him, can I get a book?’
I said I was so sorry…I didn’t want to ask any questions. Frank lived in woodland on the outskirts of Winchester, near the Twyford Gap I think. I mean, how long had he been there, dead? It’s awful, poor Frank. Bloody hell, he must have been in his 70s. I mean, I was 48 when I started doing this (and I’m 63 on the morrow!) and he seemed quite old, so he must have been late 50’s at least, maybe older. I seem to remember he told me he started busking in 1969!
I got the first volume out and flicked through it – I told this man, Frank’s friend, that there was a photo of Frank in it and I wanted to find it and show it to him. I couldn’t remember where it was and was flicking through the whole book from the back and then remembered it must be near the beginning because Frank features quite frequently during the very early days, imparting advice and Frank-isms to me. I found the photo – it’s a few pages in, of Frank playing his accordion at exactly the same place where I am now.
I was about to hand the book over – I didn’t want any money but the bloke handed me two tenners and insisted I take them. Fuck, I wrote all that so long ago, I can’t remember what I wrote about Frank but not all of it was complementary. Like all the people who came up to me and said no one ever knew what the fuck he was playing!