Diary Of A Busker Day 210

Diary Of A Busker Day 210 Wednesday March 14th 2012 Winchester High Street 1. Opposite Card factory Time: 1:38-2:59pm, 2. Opposite O2, Time: 3:18-4:42pm
As the Buttercross spot is taken – by Rob (still getting louder) and the middle spot at the crossroads by Frank, I’ve again got the raw end of the deal – down at Debenhams. As I’m setting up, a tall man walking by says, ‘I haven’t got any change – I’ll give you some later, okay?’ ‘Yeah, okay.’ Actually, I think he’s drunk – he’s more staggering than walking. Sure enough, he returns – with can of Strongbow cider and a cigarette. He sits down on the pavement, right opposite me on the other side of the street, in front of the alley way which leads to the back of the shops. He listens…and gets up now and then to 1. walk about, and 2. talk/shout at anyone passing. He then gets a chair from behind the big bin which is just inside the alleyway, puts it down on the pavement and sits. I reckon I’m guaranteed an audience of one, at least, for the duration. I play When I’m Sixty-Four and he joins in on the “birthday greetings, bottle of wine” bit, which occurs in ONE of the song’s verses – but in this guy’s version, it occurs in ALL of the verses, somewhat appropriately, perhaps. Then – ‘Hey! d’ya know Greensleeves?!’ Well, I have the music in my book and could probably fake it (or busk it), but I’m growing weary of him and in fact, slowly starting to hate him – he’s making my time go slow and the money’s not coming in, either. ‘No!’ I shout across. ‘What about bluesleeves?!’ he shouts back. ‘NO!’ He gives up, gets up – still with can of cider and fag and now he wants to dance with the women, mainly old, who are walking by. Some humour him and oblige with a brief – a very brief twirl, some are definitely not amused. He even wants to dance with some of the men and gets quite aggressive if someone – anyone – doesn’t want to play his game.
He’s now joined by a local down and out who goes and pulls out another chair from behind the bin (these guy’s have been here before, surely), draws it up next to the first guy’s chair and sits down. The first guy sits down and so now my audience has doubled. Now guy ONE is shouting something at me, but it’s hard to understand – his voice is just a kind of low growl, like an animal that’s getting wound up. Next thing I know, he’s run across the street, tripped on something a few feet from me and is flat out on the pavement, right next to me, and to finish the job, my bucket’s been knocked over and all the money, which I admit isn’t much, is everywhere. His mate runs across and helps him up. I say, ‘I think you better stay over the other side,’ which is rather on the polite side considering how annoyed I am, and anyway, what was he going to do to me if he hadn’t tripped? He certainly wasn’t coming to shake my hand. I may just have a loose paving stone to thank for my safe exit/continued existence…or maybe I just see the worst in people.
His mate says ‘Sorry about your bucket’ and I reply ‘It’s okay, it’s not your fault,’ and he helps him back over to the other side. By this time I’ve had enough and decide to do two more songs then leave – that’ll take my time here to an hour and a quarter. I play Duck Baker’s arrangement of Georgia On My Mind; slow, a bit jazzy, a bit late-night. Behind the music, I can hear the drunk growling, now and then almost imperceptible, then, all of a sudden loud, then a murmur – any words there may be are undecipherable. All I can think of is that this sounds exactly like a Tom Waits song, with this maniac growling. I start to crack up. I’m laughing, with my head down so my chin’s touching the top of my guitar. It’s EXACTLY like a Tom Waits song –  my guitar could easily be a piano. It’s so funny, I think ‘there must be some money in this!’ It really does crack me up.
In my break I chat to Frank, up the road. He got here late, he says – ‘I was up all night looking for her… (pats his dog, Kazoo – asleep in her basket on top of his cart)…she went missing, from two till four o’clock. I couldn’t find her anywhere – even phoned the police. Then I found her – you know where she was? At the pub – ’cause that’s the place she knew where I’d be going.’
Earnings: £22.45

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