Diary Of A Busker Day 540 Thursday April 10th 2014 Winchester (Opposite Bellis, Time: 2:15-4:18pm).
Another try at recording some songs. Today it’s Ne Me Quitte Pas, Chinatown, Yellow Bird, Wheels (twice), and Twelve-String Shuffle. Wheels twice, as the first one was aborted halfway through, when a woman donated and then started a conversation about Yellow Bird – the song before. The conversation’s on the tape as I didn’t switch the camera off until she went away.
Near the end – a long set, a young guy came up. He said he was from the Risen Pizza Company, he really liked my style and wanted me to play at the Merrydown Farm Fun Day on Friday (some serious alliteration there). The farm’s near Basingstoke and he said he would pay the train and taxi and there’d be hundreds of people – a lot of kids, and it might be really good for me. His name: Dennis Veazey. We exchanged cards and he said he’d phone me in the evening…
(Fast forward to the evening)…at 7 o’clock, he hadn’t phoned so I tried the number on his card and got ‘this number has not been recognised’, so I went on the Risen Pizza Company website, found another number and got through to Mark – the company manager. When I told him about what Dennis said to me, he seemed a bit put out – ‘If anyone’s going to hire anyone, it’s ME they talk to, not Dennis. When Dennis is manager here, he can decide who to get, until then it’s ME. So, what do you do, or what did Dennis say you were going to do? – just turn up? I suppose you have a hat, and people walk by and chuck in 5p, 50p, do they?’ This got me quite angry. I said ‘Look, I didn’t contact your company. This Dennis bloke came up to ME and said he liked what I play and asked ME to phone HIM, OK?’
I thought this guy was a twat, but I said I’d send a link to a video, which I did – that one from 2011 of The Third Man, with the poor late Colin standing near me. He gave me another number for Dennis, which I then left a message on, saying I’d spoken to this Mark. I never heard back.
Earnings: £26.53p