Diary Of A Busker Day 84 Tuesday April 19th Winchester High Street, (1. opposite Clarks, Time: 1:45-3:25pm, 2. opposite WH Smiths, Time: 4:50-6:40pm.)
I’ve just sat down and tuned the guitar when one of my regulars turns up. He says he’s seen our friend Marie Therese, the long burgundy coated French lady. “Oh yes, she wants me to go to her house and tune her guitar.” I say. “Ah, that’s what she’s calling it now, is she! I didn’t even know she had a guitar!” “What?” Then I get the drift of his insinuation. “Um, NO! I said I’d go round and tune her guitar for her – it was ME who asked her for her address!” “Oh…well, I’m just warning you, watch out! And she’ll probably be drunk, too.” he says. “Right, OK, thanks.”
I begin with several songs with the two lowest strings lowered two semitones. So it’s Yellow Bird – always a good ‘starter’ song, as it’s not too difficult to play and very mellow, followed by Wheels which is much more difficult with my Focal Dystonia, and then an untried/untested tune – a mid-seventies Chet Atkins arrangement of Vincent – “Starry, Starry Night…” by Don McLean. It’s a really famous tune and should bring in some coins…if I can play it right – there are some complicated sections, with harmonics but I’ve practised it alot at home… I play for fifteen minutes before I get, or ‘earn’, my first coins: two 20s and a 10, during the new song, so that’s OK. A man of about sixty drops three 2p coins in and seems genuinely proud of his donation – “See? Three 2p coins, see…” he says this before he puts them in AND after – picking them up again and showing me. I think there’s something not quite right about him but thank him very much anyway. Halfway through the set I glance to my left and see the familiar hulk of Maurice sitting on the bench near WH Smiths. I can HEAR him, in fact! I get back to concentrating on my playing. The workmen from last week are hear again, in their hole. They’re a bit noisier today – they’ve got what I can only assume is a saw for sawing concrete – a concrete saw, I reckon. It’s loud, but they don’t use it all the time, and then only for a couple of minutes. Even so, it’s getting on my nerves and I decide to move after an hour and a half, which is long enough to be playing in one place anyway but the workmen are alright – one was whistling along to La Vie En Rose earlier. Before I go, a man with his eighteen month old daughter listen. He gives her a coin and tries to get her to put it in my bucket but she just wants to hand it to me. After several tries I take it, put it in the bucket then take out a 1p coin and hand it to her as a gift. She takes it and puts it in the bucket! I feel sorry for her – she looks like she’s had an operation on her eye and has a patch over it. She doesn’t make a sound the whole time – I really do wonder what’s going through the minds of these really young children when they hear this weird sound coming from this man with a guitar, a small black box beside him and an orange bucket in front of him.
I try and relax for a few minutes in the cathedral grounds – eat my small apple and read a couple of pages of a book I’ve brought with me, James Bond – Live And Let Die. However, it’s difficult to read if I’m not relaxed and I’m not as I’m not here to read books! I’m hear to busk and feel guilty reading, so I probably won’t bring a book again!
Back at the high street I can see Maurice is still there. I have to make a decision: do I set up where he is and risk him engaging me with the probable negative consequence to my earnings, or do I set up further down and have a relaxed, financially predictable second session? I take the wrong decision and set up near him, opposite WH Smiths. I’m tuning up and can hear him greet me from INSIDE the pasty shop which is behind me and up a bit. He comes out, stands next to me. “I hear Zeta-Jones has joined the club! She’s decided to come out, oh yes! Bi-polar! Oh yes, my boy, I’m in good company – Steven Fry, Winston Churchill, what’s his name…the chap who painted the flowers…” “Van Gogh?” I say. “Yes, him too!” He prods my bucket a few inches further out towards the pavement with his walking stick and shouts out to anyone “COME ON PEOPLE!, ARE YOU GOING TO GIVE THIS MAN SOME MONEY?! HOW’S HE SUPPOSED TO BUY FOOD?!” Maurice tells me of his new business venture, selling fruit and flowers in a lay-by up the A43 near Silverstone. “And I’m going to get a man to install a refridgeration unit in my camper, and you know why, don’t you…because as the mum’s are buying the strawberrys and the flowers, the kiddies are going to want an ice lolly, aren’t they?” Maurice says his fruit is delicious and, being amiable, I say I would like to try some sometime. “Would you? Well, come with me, it’ll only take a minute – we just have to walk through Boots and my van’s on the other side! You can leave your things with them in that shop, they won’t mind – if you ask them nicely, or I’LL ask them, I’ll TELL them, they won’t refuse ME, Ha Ha!” I say it’s OK, it only takes me a minute to pack up – I’ll take it with me. I haven’t even played a note and I’m packing up! But wait, Maurice has sat down again and is feeding a dog cream from a pastry. He’s scooping the cream from the pastry and the dog’s licking it off his fingers. Five minutes later, he gets up then sees someone he knows, because he knows EVERYONE, of course. It’s a man with one leg in a wheelchair. He’s telling him about his fruit. A few minutes later we finally start walking through Boots. “Does that man want to try some of your fruit, too?” I ask Maurice. “Oh no! He likes BEER! That’s why I call him Legless Brian!” While walking from one side of Boots to the other, Maurice talks to no less than three more people. He sees a woman with a baby in a pram. “My she’s getting BIG!” Then, to the baby – “aren’t you? How old is she now – six months?” The mother: “No, six weeks!” We get out the other side and Maurice is talking about his bi-polar condition. “My doctor says people like me think they can rule the world! I said, well I CAN rule the world! Churchill had it – how d’you think he shot up all those huns?!” We get to his camper and he opens the side door. “You know, it used to smell real ARSEHOLEY in here, but now I’ve got it smelling lovely! Come over here, put your nose in!” I do, it’s full of little trays of fruit and flowers and paintings… “Yeah, it’s very nice, Maurice – has a nice sweet smell.” He gets back in and hands me two small bags of plums – “Here, you give this to my nice tailor in that shop.” He was talking to the obviously well dressed man from the Gieves And Hawkes shop when we got to his van, parked right outside the shop. “Say it’s from Maurice, with his regards!” I do this. Back outside, Maurice is in the driving seat. The seat next to him, like the rest of his van is covered with fruit, books, flowers, paintings… He talks some more of his A43 business concern. I tell him it reminds me of the Somerset Maugham story The Verger. Does he know it? No he doesn’t – this gives me a chance to speak! I tell him the basics of the story, about a man, the verger of a church who’s called into the office when it’s discovered he can’t read or write. The preists/vicar can’t have an ‘illiterate’ working here so they sack him from his job which he’s done for years. On walking home, he feels like a cigarette but there’s no tobacconist. He reckons he can’t be the only one who would like there to be a tobacconist here, so he gets all his money and opens one himself – which becomes successful, so he goes around and finds another street that could do with having a tobacconist and opens one there, then does the same in many other streets, eventually he has a whole string of them and becomes rich. One day his bank manager calls him in to his office and suggests he invest some of his fortune. He agrees and is given some forms to read and sign. He tells his bank manager he can’t read or write. His bank manager then says “You mean to tell me you’ve built up this very successful business and you can’t read?! Good God, man, where would you be if you COULD read and write?!” “I can tell you – I’d be the verger of St. Peter’s Church” the man says.
I eventually end up back in the high street and begin playing about an hour after I set up the first time. I have an uneventful session. For the last half hour I listen to three young guys, one quite fat, sitting on The Buttercross making loud comments to people walking by. They then walk past me, the fat one saying “We’d give you some money mate, but we ‘aint got any right now, Ha Ha!”
Money-wise I’ve had a lousy day – only twenty-three pounds and I’ve been here for FIVE hours, although I’ve been playing for no more than four – my own fault. However it’s always entertaining whenever Maurice is around and the two bags of plums he gave me are very nice.
Earnings: £23.15p