Diary Of A Busker Day 263 Saturday July 28th 2012 Winchester High Street 1. Opposite Oxfam, Time: 1:10-2:45pm, 2. Opposite Jack Wills, Time: 3:40-4:20pm, 3. Opposite Vodafone, Time: 4:30-7:25pm
The street’s full up today, with both people and buskers. At The Buttercross there’s a young guy who I’ve often seen – don’t know his name, playing Hallelujah. Further down, two old blokes sitting on a bench with guitars, and down at the crossroads, two girls collecting money for Swaziland. I have a good hour and a half opposite Maison Blanc, then take a break in the cathedral grounds to count the dosh (well above the usual hourly average), and watch people watching the Olympics on the big screen they’ve got set up. Walking back, I chat to a guy I’ve seen before, busking next to The Slug & Lettuce. He wears a hat and plays a nicely fire-glowed little acoustic guitar. Unlike a lot of buskers, he’s not too loud and in yer bleeedin’ face, which makes me rather warm to him. I ask how it’s going for him today. ‘Not too well, I think I’ll be going soon.’ He says he’s got to get a bus to Baddesley. I ask his name and he gives me a card that says RICK TARRANT – ACOUSTIC GUITAR & VOCALS, COUNTRY/BLUEGRASS/FOLK. Rick’s a nice, friendly guy and he doesn’t mind posing for a photo which I’m able to give him a few minutes later, after a lightning quick visit around the corner to Boots’ self-developing photographic department. After bidding Rick a fond farewell, I pop into the St. Lawrence Church and see a PRAY FOR card written in a foreign language; Dutch is my uneducated guess. I wrote it down – “Rian dat man go vn unieen gaat voor haarl.” Carrying on down the road, outside the toilets, the guy who’s always coming out with a quote from some old movie, is waiting for his daughter to come around with the car. He told me a line the other day which I couldn’t quite remember later on, when I wrote about the day, so I ask him about it – ‘What was the line you said? – James Cagney?’ ‘Edward G Robinson – “You’re good, kid, but around me you’ll only ever be second best!”‘ That’s it! He talks about getting older. He can’t walk too well and points to his swollen legs. ‘I was alright til I was seventy!’ and about drinking – ‘I have a bit of rum in the evening. It’s amazing how, after a couple of sips, you forget about everything…you have no problems! Amazing, isn’t it?’ Indeed. There’s a big suitcase next to the bin near us and my man is concerned about this. He thinks it might be a bomb. ‘It’s been there for a few minutes. I think maybe someone’s gone to the toilets.’ I have to admit, it makes ME a bit uneasy, as well, then I notice that the handle’s broken. Now, putting that along with the suitcase being next to a bin, well…there can only be one logical conclusion! ‘Ah,’ I say, pointing out the handle, ‘Someone’s dumped it, see?’ A bit later, when my man’s lift turns up, it suddenly occurs to me that after seeing him around for over a year, I still don’t know his name. So I ask him…it’s Eddie.
Back on the street I set up opposite Jack Wills, the posh university outfitters. Just to my right are the Healing people who I’m becoming more and more tempted to approach about my Focal Dystonia. Not today though; I’m not here long enough. I pack up after only forty minutes as the takings were almost non-existent.
So, down the road to the crossroads. One of the street cleaners walks past and shouts, ‘Busy all day!’ to me. ‘YOU are?’ I say. ‘Yeah, I’m off to the cathedral now, the telly’s not being switched off til ten.’ ‘Oh right, I see.’ I’m here for almost three hours, which is a hell of a long time to spend playing in one place…like Frank! But I make about double the hourly average, and it’s mainly down to one song, Here Comes The Sun. I played it a couple of times during the beginning of the final hour but I try not to repeat stuff, if just for the sake of the people who work in the shops – I don’t want someone to come out and say, ‘can you play something else for once, you idiot.’ But after all the shops are shut, at six o’clock, I can play whatever I want as many times as I want. Like on the London underground, I only ever did The Third Man and La Vie En Rose. I think I went a bit mad, actually. But here, when I played Here Comes The Sun, the money really did literally pour in. I don’t know what it was; it’s always been popular, but never anything like this. So after the shops shut, I played it non-stop, or with a break every ten minutes where I’d do something else, just so I wouldn’t go completely bonkers, so when opera singer Mr. William Kendal came by and gave a five pound note, he got not one but TWO arrangements of The Third Man. I did feel a bit of a parasite, though, living off one song, but you can’t argue with coinage, and all tolled up, I reckon Here Comes The Sun made me £50 today; the balance of the total takings, without a doubt. In fact today was the only time where I could actually feel the weight of the coinage weighing me down as I walked home. An occurrence without precedent! So, Song Of The Day – Here Comes The Sun. Song Of The Month – HCTS. Mind, my right shoulder was in pain for the last two hours; close to six hours straight playing time. Too much!
Earnings: £98.00