Day 2759
Friday November 13th 2026
Brussels
Last day in Brussels and third day busking on the trot…and today I’m back where I was yesterday, being looked down on (literally and metaphorically) by the topless beauties made of stone. It’s been raining on and off through the morning so I need to get out when I can and that means after Crocque Bruxelles at Le Cirio a couple of doors down from the hotel. In fact, old Jacques filmed there in 1968 – there’s a photo of him and Angie Giradot on the wall in front of my table. I didn’t recognise him at first because he’s got a moustache. I had to ask the waiter who it was! ‘Oh, that is the most famous Brussels singer, Jacques Brel.’
Anyway, it’s sunshine when I start up with Albatross. At the end a black woman comes up and starts flattering me, not just the music but how I look and I’m starting to think she might be a prostitute because I’m 64 and she’s 43 and I can’t work out why else she’d be coming on to me…or maybe she’s just friendly. The other thing is, at one point, she offers me ‘some work’ but doesn’t tell me any more, despite my inquiring. Anyway, after a few minutes I have to say ‘Look, it’s been really nice talking to you…what’s your name?’ ‘Angelina, and you are…Marvin B Naylor?’ ‘Yeah, that’s it, but anyway I’ve just started and I have to play another song, OK?’ After a few more minutes Angelina finally does walk off, though I give her a business card in case she wants to stay in contact!
Walking about for around half an hour is a 60-ish black man who is wearing three pairs of trousers, all of different heights on his person. The lowest is literally down by his ankles and the highest is about a foot under his arse. All his clothes are absolutely filthy. He wanders by, wanders off, then back. He gets a paper cup of something from one of the restaurants and sits down at a table next to me for a few minutes before he gets up and walks off. There is quite a bit of begging here (they all seem to have these paper cups) and I’ve seen families curled up under a blanket, which is something you don’t often see in England.
What next…ah yes, a couple of young Ray Ban-wearing Chinese blokes stop. One shows me his phone. It’s got Chinese writing at the top of the screen and underneath WE WOULD LIKE TO DO A SONG.
‘Sorry, I don’t really do that. I have to play, OK? Sorry’ and they smile and walk off. I have to be in the right mood for that and I wasn’t, possibly because I’ve got my mind and eye on a darkish cloud in the distance and it’s bloody well moving towards us.
I was beginning to think no one here has got a CD player because I haven’t sold any the last two days. Then a man comes up after Je T’aime – ‘I like what you play. You play…a 12-string? It reminds me of when I was in England (Je T’aime? Really?)…many, many years ago.’
‘Oh, thank you. Do you mind if I ask when that was?’
‘Ah…well, sixty years ago, yes…well, 1968. I was twenty, I’m eighty now.’
‘Really? Well, you look good for it.’ He did.
‘Well…the lines (he smooths down his cheek)…but you know.’
‘Look, you look younger than me. So, 1968…I was six!’
‘Well, your playing, it reminds me and I thank you…you have CD?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got two actually, they’re different.’
‘Which is best? Which do YOU think is best?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘You must know, they are your CDs! What is best?’
‘Oh, I don’t know…OK, this one’ and I give him the longer one and he hands me a tenner. Result.
But that kind of thing chokes me up sometimes. Someone telling me I’ve reminded them of their youth.
And that cloud is now above and it’s starting to piss it down and that’s the end of that. I got through an hour and fifty minutes – it would have been two hours if Angelina hadn’t turned up, but it doesn’t matter. I moved the stuff undercover, to the Brussels Grill tables and packed up. Amazingly, it didn’t stop raining as I’d packed up and I was able to deploy the cheap umbrella for the walk home, because “home” is Room 14 of La Bourse Hotel for another 20 hours.
The coinage? 68.96 euro, so £57.56 (plus a 50 Bani Romanian coin – worthless, and a silver 20 cent Singapore coin, worth about 12p)
So that makes the total earned in Brussels 251 euros, which is £209.51p. That almost pays for the Eurostar back to old Blighty. I’m happy with that.