Dairy Of A Busker Day 2571 Saturday June 28th 2025 Winchester.
Saturday afternoon and no one at the top spot!…apart from Don on his latest painting. A woman came up and told me that Clare the old lady who used to dance non-stop in front of me and all the other buskers, has gone into a home – Westacre, not far from Greenhill Road and which I played at a few years ago. I asked her about the TV thing Clare was supposed to have done but this woman didn’t know anything about that – ‘I know lots of young people video-ed her and putting these videos on social media or whatever they do but I think a lot of them were making fun of her’ she said. So I reckon we’ve seen the last of her. It’s been months, anyway. Poor woman. I did two hours, though not quite in the same place; I had to move the stuff a few feet to the left after an hour, as the shade had moved and it was too bloody hot to stay in the sun!
After a toilet break I set up in The Square in the shade…a young woman came up, put in a fiver and asked for Stairway To Heaven. I said ‘Well, I know the song but don’t really have a proper fingerstyle arrangement but I’ll do something!’ What I did was the main guitar up to the end solo – I did a couple of bars of that then thought “Sod this, I’m not playing anymore!” because guitar solos sound shite on their own…and I would have messed up some part of it and I’d be embarrassed!
Coinage was good and even the noteage; I got no less than SIX fivers. And there were some friendly folk about. One man from outside The Old Vine brought over a plastic pint cup of water which was very welcome as my squash bottle was almost empty (for once I remembered to drink it). I was only going to do an hour but ended up doing an hour and 45 minutes as the dosh was so good. In fact, it was so good I had something I haven’t had for ages, namely, a Golden Day. In other words, more than £100 was collected. £105.75 to be exact.