Diary Of A Busker Day 346 Saturday March 30th 2013 Winchester High Street, opposite Oxfam. Time: 12:20-1:22pm, 2:25-3:37pm
At the top of the High Street, outside Barclays Bank, there’s a bloke singing with a guitar and harmonica and that’s enough to be getting on with, I reckon. At The Buttercross there are a lot of young people wearing blue T-shirts, setting up a load of steel drums so it looks like this area – and half a mile in either direction – is going to be pretty well out of bounds for the foreseeable future! A bit further down and there’s a lot of banging going on and a few more seconds on and I can see the source; a guy sitting down outside the closed Carlton Cards shop, whacking in a seemingly random manner a bunch of different-sized upturned plastic buckets. What a bloody racket and why are there loads of people standing around? In disbelief? That’s the only reason I’D watch anything as useless as that, and yes, he’s got a hat in front of him.
Down at the crossroads (sounds like a blues song), I stop to work out where to go…and it looks like it’s gong to be old faithful down at C&A/. Just then, as I’m pondering, Rob appears with his missus and his cart of gear. We moan about the bucket-basher up the road, who we can hear all too loudly, and the weather, of course. Like me, Rob’s had quite a bad time. He says he spent £25 going to Salisbury yesterday and he might as well have stayed home. We then see Rick Tarrant, who’s so quiet we almost don’t hear him singing with his guitar, a few yards down. Rob doesn’t know his name so I tell him, and say he’s usually up the road, on the other side of the alleyway, next to The Slug & Lettuce. He must have been blasted out by the steel band. Then some guy comes up and hands me a black and white photo of me. He says he took it a while back; he takes lots of pictures and develops them himself. ‘How about that, then?!’ says Rob.
Then, our opera singer friend Demelza turns up (what is this? – some busker convention?) She’s really annoyed. The reason; She was up at her usual spot – The Buttercross, earlier, as this steel band were setting up. She asked them if she could do her set which is only twenty minutes, before they started, as she thought it would take them that long to sort themselves out, and they were really funny about it, saying something like they weren’t prepared to wait for her to stop if they were ready to play and she was still singing, even if she only had a couple of minutes to go. Well, that’s just not on. She even said ‘Look, I’m being polite, do you mind if I sing while you’re setting up?’ She could have just started up without asking. But they were real arseholes about it, saying they had a permit from the council. By this time, Rick had joined us (not to be left out), and we should have all marched up there and kicked their arses. We didn’t. Instead, I offered Demelza the spot down the road I was heading for, but she didn’t think it would be the right place for her and she was probably right. A big-voiced opera woman needs the right spot, and not with noisy buses going by at 3mph. Anyway, she said goodbye and went off somewhere and Rob and the missus went to set up at the Market Street corner of Monsoon, where I’ve been playing lately, and Rick went home. I forgot, earlier when me and Rob were moaning about the tub-basher, Rob said we needed the Timpsons guy to come out of his cave and have a go at him. In fact he was banging away almost right opposite his shop. The Timpsons guy must have heard him…maybe that’s more his style!
I eventually got playing and managed an hour before the pain got too much and I had to take a break, and a rather long one, in Waterstones, where I read part of the introduction to a new book about how pop music is obsessed with its own past. Thankfully there was no piped music, although near the end of the hour, some choir started up outside, singing some crap Adele song. As I was 90% warmed up, I decided to investigate and I ventured out and looked over the balcony in the middle bit of the Brooks Centre. What I saw was a large number of 50-65 year olds, all in black T-shirts saying ROCK CHOIR. They were now doing some 60s pop/soul thing. But there was no soloist. They were just singing over a backing track, or the record. There was a slightly younger woman conducting, for want of a better word. The rock choir-master? Anyway, she was really getting into it – I suspect she thought she was really cool! It was hilarious. I’m a miserable old git and just thought it was a bloody racket…the second one today!
Back on the street, I see what’s happening up at The Buttercross…and the steel band of arseholes are still banging away; now, they really ARE a bloody racket and I’ve now I’ve forgiven the ROCK CHOIR. Rob’s been able to set up down the road, meanwhile I have a look at the prayer board in St. Lawrence Church, in the alleyway. Here’s a good one – under the PLEASE PRAY FOR bit, someone’s written “17 year old girls not to get battered by police.” Indeed. I always take mine to the chip shop in Weeke. Of course there’s nowhere else for me to go but back where I was an hour ago. Still, all those shop and market people should think themselves lucky; I’ve given them an hour off!
I must have felt brave – I attempted a very rough run-through of Classical Gas, which I’m learning off a Tommy Emmanuel video. It’s pretty bad actually, but sod it, it’s got to be done. About fifteen minutes in my set, I notice a man in his mid sixties standing near one of the bollards near the Maison Blanc tables. He’s got a small sketch book that he’s got open and he keeps looking up at me, then looking at the book so I’m assuming he’s doing me which, thinking about it, is a bit weird…it makes me feel a bit self-conscious! He’s there for almost half an hour then he goes away for a bit then he comes back and resumes sketching. He eventually comes over and puts a coin in my bucket, but by then I’m so cold I couldn’t care less about his sketch, or if it’s of me, or if it’s really good, or bad or just alright. I’m not even bothered about seeing it, or asking to see it, and he doesn’t offer, so that’s that…and that’s how far-gone I feel.
Ragtime Phillip drops by to ask me more about the Chet Atkins version of Music To Watch Girls By, and I commit the cardinal sin of calling him Jeremy by mistake, which really offends him as I don’t think they get on for some reason. I apologise and blame the cold weather, saying ‘my brain’s no good.’ On the way back, the steel band twits are STILL at The Buttercross. I make a note of their name; it’s on the side of all the drums and on all their T-shirts: Pan Jazz International. Well, PJI, you should be ashamed of yourselves! bullying Demelza Stafford, who’s lately been singing and thrilling concertgoers in a nice warm hall in Bracknell with her Madame Butterfly.
Earnings: £27.03 (including one CD) + 2 Euro coins