Diary Of A Busker Day 96 Friday May 13th Winchester High Street (1. opposite WH Smiths, Time: 1-2:20pm, 2. opposite Vodaphone, Time: 2:55-6:30pm.)
I open the session with a mellow (it’s only ever that) As Time Goes By – a real money spinner the other day. There’s an elderly man with a walking stick standing just behind and to the left of me. They often stand where they think I can’t see them, but I know they’re there – always! I know the song became really well-known because of Casablanca, in 1942, but it had been around for ten years before that. After I play it, the man goes throught the “Play it again Sam!” routine, but Bogart never said it. He said (to Sam) – “You played it for her, you can play it for me! Play it!” My man tells me that Bogart got his distinctive lispy thing from some accident he had when he was in the navy, when he was young. We talk further but I need to get playing – it’s fifteen minutes in and I’ve only done one song. I do The Third Man and he’s still there at the end – the old man, not the third man. “You need to get a Homburg – like Orson Welles, so you can put it on when you’re doing that, or you could have a box with all different hats to wear, like Tommy Cooper in that sketch he did.” “Oh yeah, I see what you mean.” I ponder this “…but it would be just another thing I’d have to carry around with me – a box full of hats.”
Todays’ Song Of The Day? Wheels – another great Chet Atkins arrangement. I have great trouble with parts of this due to my Focal Dystonia, so any compliment is greatly appreciated, especially if it takes the form of a five pound note, which it does today. The “blue” note, as it were, is followed incredibly by four or five other donations, about a pound each. Yes, definately SOTD.
Another old guy hovers in the background and waits until I’ve finished the song before he comes up. “I cremated my wife – after sixty-eight years” he says. What, after sixty-eight years? This sounds a bit odd but I don’t want to make light of whatever he means. “Oh, did you? After sixty-eight years?” “Yes, she was cremated two weeks ago, we’d been married sixty-eight years.” Of course that’s what he means – what an idiot I am! Well, I didn’t know what to say except “Oh, how are you getting on – how’s it going?” “Bloody horrible. I just wander the streets.” Oh dear, poor man.
At twenty past two I pack up as I need to be down where I was yesterday, to keep the appointment I have with the old man I said I’d give a guitar to – I’ve got it with me. I’m not 100% sure he’ll turn up but I think he will – he certainly seems keen on learning. So, after a toilet and apple break I set up, tune up and he’s here, in front of me, and again pointing, his finger almost touching my guitar string – “So that’s the first string, is it?” “No, that’s the sixth string, this one’s the first string. Now, I’ve got your guitar with me…here it is.” I take it out of the bag and hand it to him and show him an easy chord – a G major playing just four strings and fretting just one string. He gets it, after a fashion. “Remember, try to fret just the strings you need to – don’t let that finger touch the string next to it, or you won’t hear that note…” He thanks me. So, he’s now got a guitar, a gigbag and I’ve even given him one of my picks – with Epiphone written on it. I’ll leave the Chet Atkins thumbpick for the time being. So now he’s all set – he can go home, get out his beginners’ guitar books and learn. “Good luck” I say. “Just keep at it!”
A woman about sixty-five says “You remind me of Chet Baker, a famous American guitarist from the fifties and sixties.” Chet Baker? I’ve heard the name but I thought he was a trumpet player, or something like that. I need to quiz her – “Are you sure you don’t mean Chet Atkins? HE was a famous American guitarist in the fifties and sixties.” I’d also just played his arrangement of Ol’ Man River! She MUST mean him, surely. “No, Chet Baker.” “Right, I thought he played the trumpet.” She’s not having it – “No, not unless he had a career change.”
At home, I’ve been going through a tune for which I’ve had the music for a few years but I’ve never played it out here. It’s the theme from The Deerhunter – Cavatina, the famous arrangement by John Williams. The only time I’ve played it was at the funeral of Fran’s mum, in London a few months ago. Fran asked me to play Cavatina at the beginning of the service, along with Ave Maria, and at the end, when the people were leaving, she asked me to play Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring. Which I did – I played it while everyone left the church and kept it going so that the people waiting to get in the cars to go to the crematorium would have some nice soothing background music. But as I didn’t know how long anyone would be out there for, I kept playing it, over and over, for what seemed like ages, not knowing if there was anyone still there, outside. After awhile, Father Fergal put his head around the door and said “You can stop playing now!” There was no one there – they’d all gone off! Anyway, for some reason, I’ve been reluctant to play Cavatina out here. Maybe I think it’s so well-known and any mistake – and I’m bound to screw it up – will really stand out. Or maybe I feel it’s not “quirky” enough or maybe it’s too serious sounding or maybe I don’t really like it! Or maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that EVERY wedding guitar player does it. Whatever it is, I’ve decided to have a go…and I get a pound for my trouble from a man who actually saw the great John Williams play last night in Woking! – “I was waiting for him to play the Asturias…what is it?” “Leyenda.” “Yeah, but he didn’t play it” he says. And neither can I – it requires three good fingers on the right hand for the fast bits and I’m one short.
Later on, my French friend, Marie-Therese visits. She loves the white dress in the shop near us – “But it’s too much, I buy all my clothes from Charity shops, you know.” So do I, I say – “apart from my pants and socks, of course.” She tells me about her neighbour, Bob – “He has cancer, all over, but he never complains. He’s cheerful and he’s got nothing to be cheerful about.”
Earnings: £46.54p
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