Diary Of A Busker Day 2614 Thursday October 16th 2025 Winchester.
In my morning trip to town, I had a chat with my young Big Issue friend outside her Tesco Express pitch and she suggested I play in one of my old spots just up the road a bit in The Pentice so that’s what I did a few hours later. Unfortunately, despite the constant flow of people, I’d amassed the grand total of £4.50 for an hour and a half’s playing time (and my friend buggered off after twenty minutes!), so I left there in search of pastures new…there was the penny whistle bloke opposite Sainsbury’s so the Nando’s spot was out, a young bloke at The Buttercross getting a bunch of Chinese girls singing along to a backing track so this left The Square as the only spot. Of course, I rarely, if ever, play there during the week so I wasn’t looking forward to it but as it turns out, I met a foreign family who firstly donated a tenner and not only that, they bought a £10 CD, so that’s a profit of £19 – my Saviours Of The Day!
In fact, I almost missed out on that because at 3 o’clock, after I’d done just half an hour, the bloody cathedral bells started up and they refused to play in the same key as me so it didn’t sound too good. I had admitted defeat and was about to pack up when they suddenly stopped ten minutes later. You never know how long they’ll go on, I mean they seem to go forever sometimes.
One amusing incident; a young woman with an older one turned up and the young one says ‘Do you know Robin Farnham?’ ‘Yeah, I do!’ ‘Oh wow, this is amazing! She’s my friend and when I said we were coming to Winchester, she said “Oh, look out for my uncle. He busks there”. Is your name Marvin?’ ‘It certainly is!’ This was Jen and her mother Annie and they were both thrilled to see me. They filmed me doing a bit of here Comes The Sun and sent it to Robin who will have seen it when she woke up because it must have been around 7 in the morning in Vancouver. ‘Tis indeed a small world.