Diary Of A Busker day 2610 Wednesday October 8th 2025 Winchester.
Not ten minutes into the set at The Buttercross with the 12-string and I’m in trouble. The trouble is my left hearing aid, which has just done the descending four-note arpeggio indicating it’s about to conk out…and silly me, I haven’t got a reserve supply of batteries. Three more of those at five minute intervals and I’m out! Five minutes later, the next arpeggio rings out. What to do…either I pack up, nip to Boots (just down The Pentice) and buy some batteries, ask a stranger to mind the gear while I go to Boots or carry on with one engine and hope I clear the white cliffs of bloody Dover.
Well, it looks like I picked the right day because out of Nero’s comes Posh Sarah. Of course, it’s Wednesday; the day she has her coffee meetings! She comes across and puts in a fiver – ‘That’s for all the times I haven’t given you anything!’ (not true, because she kindly asked me to play for her husband’s funeral not long ago). ‘Sarah, that’s most kind of you…oh by the way, you couldn’t do me an enormous favour, could you? (I don’t give her time to think about it)…one of my hearing aids is about to conk out and I need to get some more from Boots. You couldn’t mind my stuff for a couple of minutes, could you?’ ‘Of course! You run along to Boots!’ How kind of her! So I handed her the guitar and bolted down the road, into Boots and out again with the hearing aid batteries – ‘Sarah, you’re a life saver. Thank you so much!’ ‘It’s OK, only I had a couple of people asking if I was going to sing something, like that man over there.’ She motioned to a man on the bench outside Smiths who’d been listening to me before the drama. This man had come up and asked if he could take a photo, to which I replied ‘Yes, of course. Most people don’t ask. I mean, I’ve had people come up practically to my face, and film me.’ ‘Oh, that’s not very polite.’ ‘No, it isn’t so I appreciate you actually asking.’
Two women sitting on the bench opposite, one young, the other older (her mother?) The older one comes across and asks if I can play “I give her all my love and I love her”, obviously she means The Beatles’ And I Love Her. I have to explain I don’t know a proper arrangement of it, just the opening riff and lead guitar bits, which I play for her after she returns to the bench. She then comes over again, a bit teary – ‘It was my husbands favourite song. He’s no longer here.’ I say ‘Oh, I’m so sorry and I’m sorry I don’t have a proper version but I can play here, There And Everywhere if that’s alright?’ ‘Oh yes, of course’ she says so I did that one although I’m not sure if she knew it.
Anyway, there’s no contest for the Saviour Of The Day; apart from the fiver, Posh Sarah really did save the day. In future, remember the bloody batteries, Marvin !