Diary Of A Busker Day 47 Tuesday February 22nd Winchester High Street 1. corner of Marks And Spencer 5:15-6pm, 2. opposite WH Smiths 6:05-6:35pm
A shorty in comparison to some of the recent marathons. I think I was playing La Vie En Rose – close behind The Third Man for most played song, when a lady in her 30s stopped to listen with her two toddlers – a boy and a girl. When I play The Third Man, many of the children like the “wobbly” bits – made using the vibrato unit on my guitar, so I abruptly stop La Vie En Rose and go to the couple of bars before the wobbly bits, saying “here’s the wobbly bit” just before they happen. It turns out the lady is from Austria, married to an Englishman, and has actually seen the actual Zither used by The Third Man Theme composer – the actual Anton Karas.
After a quick tear down of the ‘rig’, which takes no more than 1 minute – this makes me laugh, as when I used to play in rock groups it would take four people 45 minutes at the least to tear down or set up all the equipment. So, it takes 1 minute to rig down, 3 minutes to walk up the road to WH Smiths, 1 minute to set up – rig up?, and I’m playing 5 minutes after I left the first place.
…At 6 o’clock, it’s quite dark, there aren’t many people about, the pasty shop lady has been and gone with her sludge bucket. Near by are two CPSOs – a man and a blonde woman, talking at The Buttercross, the well-known Winchester monument and meeting place for civilians and bored CPSOs. I’ve got my eye on them. They walk toward me. The woman comes up to me. Oh here we go, I think. But she’s not coming to tell me off, merely to let me know that it WAS the saxophone duo that the complaint was about the other day. She’s a nice police, no – CPSO, no – WCPSO…
Earnings: £10.12p