Diary Of A Busker Day 2348 Wednesday April 17th 2024 Southampton.
As I’ve got to go back to Chichester on Friday, I thought a shorter train trip was in order today so I went to Southampton.
Up opposite the mall, there’s a girl doing a semi-operatic rendition of Hallelujah and if I’ve heard it done that way once, I’ve heard it done that way a million times. I set up down at the bottom where I’m just about out of earshot of her.
I got two pound coins during the first song, Albatross, but after that, nothing for ages. A very scruffy young bloke comes up and plonks a big pink plastic cup next to me and goes off without a word. Quickly looking in the cup, I see it’s about half full with a load of coins, mainly shrapnel and foreign ones. I’ll inspect it closer later on but a bit later, during People Are Strange, a man walks by and says ‘You’re singin’ the right song for this place!’ Indeed.
After an hour and a half I need to toilet so I pack most of the stuff up then dump the contents of the cup in the gigbag. So what has he bestowed on me? A load of old foreign coins including French francs, big silver Irish ones, a small crucifix on a chain, a bit of purple jewelry, some screws…and 37 old pound coins! Wow. He probably thought they were worthless. Well, he’s just given me the biggest donation I’ve had for months.
After that I was thinking of coming home but still needed the toilet so I went into the mall bursting and wouldn’t you know it, the bogs were “temporarily closed, sorry for the inconvenience”. Well, they’re always fucking closed. They’re permanently temporarily closed! So, as usual, I had to go to the ones up on level 4. Afterwards, I decided to do an hour opposite the mall entrance and picked up around £25, including two CD sales, so all in all, a more than usually profitable trip to Southampton, thanks mainly to the bloke with the pink cup.