Diary Of A Busker Day 101 Thursday May 19th Winchester High Street (1. Outside Debenhams, Time: 1:35-3:38pm, 2. Opposite WH Smiths, Time: 4:00-6:35pm.)
After the drama in the “Big Smoke” yesterday, anything else was bound to be a let-down, and it was. The usual busking spots were occupied – up at the WH Smiths end by the didgeridoo guy and down at the other end, near where the market stalls stop, there’s the percussionist Guy with a tall, older female violinist. From there on down to Marks And Spencer is the market, rendering busking not impossible but difficult and to be avoided. I decide to set up a bit further down, outside Debenhams. It’s right near Marks And Spencers but on the wrong side of the tracks, as it were. And it doesn’t go well, money-wise. In fact it’s pretty bad, only £8 for over two hours playing. However a lady – Sally, likes what I play and thinks it would be good at a “Strawberry Tea” do next month in a hall in Itchen Abbas, a village just outside of Winchester. So, subject to her boss being aggreeable to my (modest) fee, I might have got something worthwhile out of it. Who knows, if I had been at one of my regular spots, she might not have heard me…
I pack up and head up the road towards hopefully more greener and now vacant pastures. Up the road I chat to Guy who is also packing up. He’s had a good day – took £130 in five hours and inadvertantly found himself in a Bollywood film and got paid for that, too. The film people asked him to mime to an Indian language song which he found impossible to do, but he busked it and is in the film. A Bollywood film set in Winchester? Incredibly, yes. For some reason I don’t take this spot over from them – maybe I want to get as far away as I can from where I’ve just been, so I keep walking on up to WH Smiths and the didgeridoo guy has left, so I can set up.
The money here is a bit better, about £22 in two and a half hours. A couple of my old lady “regulars” visit me, and like the other day, one thinks I’ve got better and like before I say it’s problably due to the warmer temperature. My banjo owning, occasionally inebriated regular turns up, “Will you be here tomorrow?” “Probably, as it’s not going too well today.” “Oh good, then I’ll remember my banjo – you can tune it for me.” “Yep, bring it along…now, would you like The Third Man?” I spend the last fifteen minutes watching a tramp girl taking great pains getting the right amount of Lucozade into a can of Special Brew, all the time to the happy tune of Wheels…
Earnings: £31.12p