Day 2716
Thursday July 9th 2026
Winchester
After a brief chat with Don who was packing up, I headed down to Nando’s where at least I’m assured of a decent degree of shade as the heat wave continues. I know what I could use right now. That monstrous fan, the Cyclone 120, they’ve got just inside M&S down the road. It’s four feet high and puts out a veritable gale force.
Across the road is the market bloke who shouts non-stop “STRAW’BREES FOR A FIVER!” How these guys do it for eight hours is something I’ll never know.
ACE luthier Jimmy came by with his wife – ‘How’s the guitar, Marvin? Sounds alright.’
‘Cheers Jimmy, it’s fine…still got a bit of a buzz on the little A string but I can live with it. It’s great, sounds a lot better, thanks for doing that for me…and I’m getting used to the fact there’s no fret markers on the five, seven and nine spaces, though it might be nice to have some there, like the one on the twelfth one.’
‘Well, I might be able to help you there. My wife’s a jeweller. She could probably do that for you.’
‘Wow, really?’
Jimmy’s wife smiles.
‘Well’ I say, ‘it really is who you know, not what you know, isn’t it?’
I’m then offered a Cornetto from a woman and it would have been rude to turn it down. The trouble is, you have to stop and eat these quickly but it takes too long so after a few licks I stick it in a tube protruding from the flower pot. I wonder if that manager will come out and say ‘You can’t put that Cornetto there, That plant is my property.’
Like the past couple of weeks, there are loads of young foreign students about. Two boys come by and one looks in the gigbag (too hot for the hard one) and says ‘Can you give me a…a pound?’ ‘What? Sorry, no.’ A minute later one of their supervisors comes up – ‘Sorry about those boys!’
Here we go again. Just before 5 o’clock another woman stops and hands me yet another bloody lolly! This one’s the same as the one that mother gave me yesterday. One of those three coloured rocket ones. She didn’t even ask if I wanted it, just handed it to me and walked off! Have I got GIVE ME A LOLLY written on my forehead?! It’s in a plastic wrapper and I stick it in the flower pot – I’m not having another bloody lolly right now, see how long it lasts before it melts.
After an hour and forty minutes I’ve had enough…and I’ve had enough of the bloke shouting ad infinitum/nauseam about his strawberries. The coinage is £12.25 – pretty crap considering all the people about. As I’m about to pack up a woman who I see often – she’s boss-eyed – stops to tell me some local news.
‘They’ve painted the windows on the top floor of St. John’s so it looks like they’re real windows but they’re not. They were bricked up but now they’ve painted them, you know?’
‘Yeah, I know. St. John’s, down the road?’
‘Yeah, just down there. St. John’s.’
‘Yeah, the almshouses.’
‘Yeah, It looks really good but they’re not real. They just painted them…to look real. On the top floor.’
‘Wow, I’ll have to go down and have a look. Thanks for letting me know.’