Diary Of A Busker Day 488 Saturday January 4th 2014 Winchester (1. Opposite Cafe Nero/Bellis, Time: 3:17-4:17pm, 2. Opposite Phase 8, Time: 5:15-6:09pm).
A cold and rainy day but at least I’ve got my pick – there’s no one else stupid enough to come out to play – so I can sit undercover in The Pentice…and the first person who speaks to me is someone who’s never spoken to me before, despite having seen me hundreds of times. Yes, it’s Legless Brian in his wheelchair! He creeps up from behind and says ‘Not much going on today, eh?’ I turn around and say ‘Sorry?’, and he says it again – ‘Not much going on today?’ then wheels himself off.
The weather really is bad: It eases off a bit but it never stops raining, yet the money’s OK – about £12 after an hour, which is when I stop, as the hands are getting too cold. I need a break, and quite a long one, too. As I’m packing up, a bunch of young guys come up and say they have a video of me! It’s on one of their phones. They show it to me – the sound’s awful: really tinny and it takes me a while before I work out what I’m playing: Wheels. A good version, actually. I should have asked if they could put it up on youtube.
They ask me a load of questions about the style of music I do, did I ever play in groups, do I do this for a living. Well, I can’t help it – they asked for it. They get an abridged version of the Hard Luck Story: loud music = deafness = no more groups = desperation and turning to the streets = having to play an enormous amount of time to make a living = hand problems = doctor telling me to take three weeks off (the newest addition to the story)…cold weather, etc. It goes on for ages…they get bored after five minutes and drift off. They were polite enough to say goodbye, though, I’ll give them that.
At Waterstones they’ve got some piped muzak – Ain’t No Sunshine. I thought I’d been through them with all this piped muzak nonsense. It’s the bit where he goes ‘I know, I know, I know’ ad nauseum, infinitum… Then that stops, but the young Waterstones guy stacking the shelves starts whistling it! Kill! Kill! KILL!! I manage to find a spot where, due to the air-con machine being so loud, you can’t hear the music. It happens to be where I’ve sat and looked through books a few times before. There are two chairs with a small table in the middle. The trouble is, I’ve forgotten my reading glasses and I can’t read anything. However, I can make do with one of the books on the table: Photographer Of The Year, Collection 7, which has lots of nice big colour pictures.
I was in Waterstones almost an hour, as it took that long for the hands to warm up! Back outside, it’s dark…and I’ve still got the run of the place. I stop outside Timpsons. The lights are on but I can’t see anyone in the shop. I’d rather set up here – a change from where I was, even though it was only 30 feet up the road. While I’m loitering, trying to decide if I’m definitely going to set up, Jeremy appears. His umbrella’s up, as it’s raining again, naturally. He says ‘Now Marvin, you’re seriously not thinking of playing, I mean look at all the people. They’ve got their heads down, their umbrellas up. You don’t mean you’re going to play, surely’. (I do…and stop calling me Shirley). He’s right: it’s pretty miserable but I’m not going home yet. Then he says ‘Or are you doing it for fun? For pleasure, maybe?’ I say ‘It’s no fun. I’m doing it for money’. He looks at me like I’m off my head, which I think I might be if I do this much longer.
Jeremy apologises for not having any money, then he’s off. So I set up right in front of Timpsons, which apparently shut at 5 o’clock – a few minutes ago. During the first song, a man waiting for his wife to emerge from Phase 8, opposite, comes across, donates, and starts telling me about his wife’s ear problems. Her cochlea, there was something wrong with it and she couldn’t hear, and the first song she heard after it they fixed it was Apache. So I said ‘I do that one, I’ll do it in a minute!’ Then he tells me some sad news. He was listening to the radio and they were playing all these Everly Brothers songs: one of them’s just died – Phil, I think he said.
Up to that point, I was carrying on playing while talking, and it was the Hard Luck Story again, because he asked if I played in groups, but when he told me one of the Everly guys died, I stopped. I said ‘Oh really? – well that’s sad’, which it was. But thanks to the miracle of recorded sound, he lives on! After a bit, my man went across to Phase 8, and I played Apache – not too cleverly, either, as I had to switch to the flatpick and the cold was really getting to the hands again. I made a few mistakes, in fact I couldn’t play the bloody thing.
Near the end, the man and his wife, who was finally out of the shop – I think they kicked her out as they were closing – come across. The wife then related an apparently ‘funny’ story – ‘We’ve just seen Brian Conley in pantomine in Southampton. He was singing Yesterday – “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, there’s a shadow hangin’ over me”, and down came Hank Marvin – you know, this cardboard cutout of him!’ Actually, it is quite funny. Thanks for the funny story!
Something else I forgot when I left the house: my watch, so I’ve had to ask people the time…and not one person has a watch. They all have to look on their phones! I don’t know how long I’ve been out but I reckon it’s pretty near an hour so I’ll pack up soon. The last ten minutes, Big Issue Simon and a woman walk by and go into Boots. He looks in a bad way. They come out a minute later and sit on the bench, down a bit from me. I suddenly remember reading – and being quite shocked – that the average life-expectancy of a homeless person is 44. And that’s how old Simon is. I was going to go over and ask how he was, but just then two other people came along and started talking to him, so I thought I won’t interupt! Poor bloke – he really looked bad: limping along.
The takings for the second set were good: about £22 for just under an hour. Amazing, actually, considering the rain. Sympathy money.
Earnings: £36.52p
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