Diary Of A Busker Day 2556 Friday June 20th 2025 Winchester.
A hot day; it’s 27 degrees and I can only set up in the shade and the only place where there IS one is at the top spot, which I was thinking of avoiding as I’ve been there a lot lately. Still, can’t be helped. I set up and start playing and I’m OK for a bit until the sun moves and I have to move everything five feet to the right…half an hour later I have to do it again but five feet back to the left, where I was before! I can’t work that one out but there it is, the sun does what the hell it wants these days.
I have a brain block at the end of the first verse of Life On Mars? and have to stop it and go into something else. This has just reminded me of something the other day. A bloke came up while I was doing Life On Mars? and said ‘I love that song, Bowie, and I know how annoying it is when people come up in the middle of something and start talking to you because my guitarist keeps telling me how annoying (at this point I’ve stopped playing)…oh I’m sorry, I’ve just done it. I’ve broken your concentration and here I am going on about how annoying it is, sorry, carry on please!’
Near the end (it’s a two hour set straight through), a bunch of male foreign students, some shirtless, sit behind me on the monument and a few donate. I ask where they’re from…
‘Poland.’
‘Oh right…Frederic Chopin – he’s my favourite composer.’
‘Chopin, yes…Paderewski?’ Now, how the fuck does a 15 year old Polish boy know about Paderewski?! Then again, most French teenagers know La Vie En Rose. It must be a continent thing.
‘Paderewski? Yeah, they’re all great!’
They’ve been here for a week, London that is, and here for a day, going back tomorrow. I say goodbye and hope they’ve had a good time.