Diary Of A Busker Day 243 Sunday June 3rd 2012 Oxford Street, Reading Opposite Anne Summers, Time: 11:36-12:58pm
Having arranged a fingerstyle tutorial with my new acquaintance – legendary American (now residing in Reading) jazz, blues, folk and swing guitarist Duck Baker – at two o’clock, I took the opportunity to kill not two but three birds with one stone, and get a bit of practice in beforehand…and perhaps even make my train fare back in the process…in fact, to kill even four birds, as this day marks my debut in Reading. It’s a completely overcast sky with drizzling rain so I need to find some place with some kind of overhang/shelter. I find a good spot next to the entrance to Union Street – there’s an overhang which is more than adequate for my needs. The street in front of me is the equivalent of Winchester’s pedestrian High Street but about three times as wide. Right across is the Anne Summers shop with a couple of big posters in the windows, of models wearing lacy things; certainly a change from my usual vista; four bored blokes in the Winchester Vodafone shop. A few feet to my right stand two young women clad not in anything lacy (not as far as I can tell) but in red TK Max fleeces. They ignore me and I return the compliment. I can’t be here more than an hour and a half, which in Winchester is long enough to accumulate a tenner, which will cover my train fare. So here goes…I get a pound in the first minute, for Albatross, which I can always rely on. After that, not much happens, apart from a Big Issue seller moving from where he was sitting, in the drizzle, fifty yards down from me to across the road, under a small overhang like what I’ve got. One of the TK Max girls wanders off after fifteen minutes…then, a few minutes later, the other one goes.
I play the great Mr. Baker’s arrangement of Georgia On My Mind in honour of the man himself, and get a pound – something I’ll have to remember to relate to him. Near the end of my stay, I play Albatross again, which attracts the attention of two men who come over and listen and watch me, then a solitary walker comes over. At the end, the two together buy a CD and the other man says something in an Eastern European accent, possibly Polish. I say hello to him. ‘Beck in bleck,’ he says. I look at him, confused. Again, ‘Do…you…play beck in bleck? A see, dee see.’ Right, I’m on to it! ‘Oh right – AC/DC, no sorry, I don’t play anything like that, sorry.’ ‘You shood play it,’ he says and walks off. What’s the connection between some mellow instrumental from 1969 and the entirely different, somewhat louder AC/DC, I wonder. I stop wondering, shrug my shoulders (mentally) and marvel at the human imagination. There’s nothing else for it.
Earnings: £17.54 + 1 CD
