Diary Of A Busker Day 666

Diary Of A Busker Day 666 Friday November 7th 2014 Winchester (Opposite Oxfam, Time: 1:47-2:40pm, 3:07-4:26pm).

The temperature: 12 degrees – not too bad, although there’s a bit of wind which doesn’t help matters much. A couple donate, she correctly identifying Windy & Warm as a Chet arrangement…actually Doc Watson…or maybe they’re the same. He asks if I know Happy Again by Chet. I’ve heard of it, I think, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard it, so I give the usual response – ‘I’ll write it down and check it out’. Then I sell a CD, and I’ve got a feeling it’s to the man. This is awhile later but my brain is so muddled – probably due to the cold, that I can’t be sure!

Anyway, after the sale, I do the usual – ‘If you don’t like it, I give refunds’, and he says he used to know a bloke in a group who sold CDs and he used to say ‘If you don’t like it, bring it back and we’ll give you one WE don’t like’. He asked if I ever did any gigs in pubs or restaurants around here, so I said I tried, once upon a time, but no one would pay. That’s why they do all the open-mic nights: they get free entertainment and all the rest of it.

As it happens, Dixie McGuire secured the CD sale so it’s Song Of The Day (1st time for that one, I think), and it was also the last song of the set, as it started to rain…and not before time, as I was dying to go to the toilet and was also getting too cold. And again I remember my promise of last year – and the one before, etc., that I’d never do another winter, and it’s bleedin’ November now.

After the toilet, I ride around a bit…the New Zealand bloke is STILL at The Butter Cross – he’s there all the time now. A couple of weeks ago, it was that girl singer/songwriter…and it was quite dead at Pavilion…and the Drongo who breathes into his whistle is near the crossroads, so…I go back to where I just was! Which was OK, as I hadn’t even done an hour there. I hadn’t overstayed my welcome, in other words.

So, who’s seen the online account of the assault and/or, my letter of thanks to the Women Of Winchester. Well, Barry’s seen one of them.

The conversation:

Barry – ‘I ‘eard about what ‘appened’.

Me – ‘Oh, did you? Yeah, not very nice’.

Barry – ‘Yeah, well, ‘ee should get life for that’. (life? I don’t think even I would say that, Barry)

Me – ‘Life? Ha…well, yeah’.

Barry – ‘Yeah, ‘ee should…Sing Sing, they should put ‘im in there, for life’.

Me – ‘Yeah, I agree’.

Barry – ‘String ‘im up, you know?’

Me – ‘Yeah…(looking around)…string him up by that lamp-post, there’.

Barry – ‘Yeah, they should do’.

Me – ‘He wouldn’t do it again, Barry, would he?’

Barry – ‘Ha. No’.

Earnings: £28.10p (Including 1 CD)