Diary Of A Busker Day 238 Friday May 25th 2012 Winchester High Street 1. Opposite Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society, Time: 2:10-2:50pm, 2. Opposite Vodafone, Time: 2:54-3:12pm
Kai is violin-ing it in between The Buttercross and the crossroads. I ask him how it’s going. Very slow, he hasn’t been here long but might pack up soon. He says it’s warm and sunny but people aren’t being generous. As a bonus, he tells me about the chemical in the human body that scientists say makes people generous and that he wishes he had a bomb of it right now. I say I wish I had one or two. He tells me a joke; A man discovers a Picasso and a Stradivarius in an attic. The only problem…Stradivarius couldn’t paint and Picasso couldn’t make violins. A bit further down, at the crossroads, I meet a banjo playing busker I don’t know, Chris from Southampton. He has a great thing; a puppet which stands a couple of feet in front of him which, by way of a clever contraption of a strip of metal and strings which connects the puppet to his leg, he can make it dance. It’s a great gimmick, much better than my pumpkin bucket. The children love it. Children like my pumpkin bucket, but they like the puppet better. In fact, Chris says he’s more of a sculptor than a musician. I get a photo of him and his act, for my album.
I park myself at the bend in the road where the buses queue up…and get fed up with it soon enough. Kai’s right, it really is slow today. I pack in after 40 minutes, after I look to my right and see a slow procession of no less than five buses heading my way. The noise here is too much…the money’s too little; £4.80.
…less than five minutes later and I’m at the crossroads, near where Chris was. He’s nowhere in sight. There’s some shouting up the road, to my left. I look and see it’s Simon, the busker/Big Issue seller, although I can’t remember the last time I saw him with his guitar. He’s shouting and wearing headphones – is that so he can’t hear himself? What he’s shouting I can’t tell, although there’s a few “BIG ISSUE!”s in there. My word, what a racket. I start my set and manage to sell a CD, and that’s £5, an improvement on the first place already. One of my old lady regulars, Barbara, comes up. ‘That, what’s his name…Frank was here earlier. What does he play? – it all sounds the same!’ ‘He’s rubbish,’ I say, because I haven’t got a lot of time for Frank ever since he grassed me up to Tony. Barbara laughs, ‘Is he?’ ‘Yeah, rubbish. He’s not a musician,’ I say, quoting Tony. ‘It’s a wonder his dog can stand it,’ she says. ‘Yeah – Kazoo. I think she knocks herself unconscious when he starts up.’ Barbara’s annoyed by Simon’s shouting which is relentless – ‘Why is he shouting?’ ‘I don’t know. There’s no reason for it, he’s not going to sell more papers that way, is he?’ I think maybe he can’t help it. He’s just one of those people who always has to be making a noise. Or he’s out of it. In fact, whenever I speak to him, it’s always a one-sided conversation and you can’t get a word in. ‘Hmm…maybe he’ll fall off his perch,’ says Barbara. ‘Yeah, or maybe someone will kick him off it.’
Earnings: £13.80