Diary Of A Busker Day 476 Monday November 18th 2013 Winchester (1. Next to The Slug & Lettuce, Time: 1:30-2:32pm, 2. Opposite Vodafone, Time: 2:38-3:08pm).
At The Butter Cross, there’s a guy banging out Wild World. I’ve seen him before but don’t know his name and I’m too unsociable to wait till he’s finished to ask! Further down near Vodafone, there’s that old guy with the beard and cheap whistle and toy percussion stuff on the ground…so it’s back up by way of the backstreet (actually the posh street with all the posh shops on, like Gieves & Hawkes. Not quite the backstreets of Naples!), back to The Slug…
…where the Song of The Day turns out to be La Vie En Rose – Marie-Therese’s favourite, and I’m sure she’s died. I got a few donations, including one from a man who was with some friends(?) at one of the tables across the way. As they were leaving in the direction of the cathedral, he said ‘What more could you want – good food, lovely music!’ So, feeling unusually confident and (uncharacteristically) witty, I said ‘That’s what I tell them in there’, indicating the restaurant they’ve been sitting outside of. The man then says ‘Certainly helped my indigestion!’ …is that good or bad?
So, £13 – pretty good for one hour. I take a short break, in fact it’s no break. All I do is walk down the road – the posh one, and set up at Vodafone, the old, bearded whistler now gone. And just after I set up, who should come along but Gert, the German bagpiper, who tells me a bit more about himself. Actually, I get a bit confused at one point. He’s talking about busking and starts going on about some advice he paid £8,000 for. He saw three lots of lawyers, including Cherie Blair’s firm – the name of which I’ve forgotten. I said ‘That’s a lot of money for some advice!’
Anyway, these people represented him and he sued the police in London for unlawful arrest, for busking in Camden. He won and got £22,000 compensation! AND he’s done it in four other towns and got £4,000 in one place and £2,000 in another, all for unlawful arrest. He said ‘The police think I don’t know the law, so they think they can arrest me. If they knew I know the law, they wouldn’t do it’.
Also, he says buskers were only aloud to play for 20 minutes in Winchester until HE challenged the council. I said ‘So that’s something to do with you? – That we’re aloud to play an hour?’ ‘Two. Two hours’ he said. Two hours? I’m not sure about that – I’m sure it’s just one hour. (I wonder if Gert’s prone to exaggeration, at times?!) He says he’s off to Andover tomorrow and then ‘further afield’. I think it may be some time before we cross paths again…
Famous Down’s Syndrome actor Tom drops by and stands next to me during Blowin’ In The Wind. I don’t know if it’s part of his condition but he never says anything when he stands next to me – I really have to work at getting anything out of him. I ask if he knows the song – ‘Uhh, no’. I say ‘Bob Dylan, Blowin’ In The Wind’. Nothing. I say ‘From 1963’. Nothing. ‘Fifty years old, Tom’. ‘Fifty years – like Dr. Who!’, he says. ‘Ah, right, you like Dr. Who?’ ‘Umm, yeah’. ‘Been on TV recently, Tom?’ ‘Uhh…no’. And that’s it. He doesn’t say anything else but dances around a bit then wanders off.
Earnings: £19.92p
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