Diary Of A Busker day 2495 Wednesday February 12th 2025 Winchester.
Bloody hell, it’s that man again (as they used to say in the 1940s), walking up and down the high street, portable CD player in hand, headphones on, shouting at the top of his voice to whatever’s going on in his head. A few years ago I was asked by a nice lady if I could help teach the ukelele to people with mental “issues”. The lessons were in the Discovery Centre, now the Arc – they keep renaming it but it used to be “the library” for a million years. There were people there with varying degrees of mental disabilities, some who could barely speak. This bloke was one of them but he certainly could speak and he was very disruptive, in that no matter what song we were trying to do, he’d want to do a different one. He’s now taken his talent to the high street and if he keeps it up, will join people like ME in becoming one of the well-known “characters” of this town.
I’m down at the crossroads, the temperature is 6 degrees – cold but no wind so I’m OK for a bit. A young man – a Pret worker, comes out with a tray of something which he’s trying to get people to take. He looks embarrassed to be doing it, or maybe he’s just fucked off they’ve asked him to come out into the cold. He says ‘they’re Valentine cookies, want one?’ ‘Yeah, why not’ say I. Two things; it’s not Valentines Day and they’re not heart-shaped…but at least they’re free. It takes him awhile to get rid of them all, then he can get back into the warmth of the shop.
An old bloke stands in front of me, his ripped open his shirt to reveal his Led Zeppelin T-shirt. I stop what I’m playing and go into the Whole Lotta Love riff (which, let’s face it, you can only play a number of times before it becomes pointless and redundant). I stop and ask if he’s seen the new Led Zeppelin film “Becoming Led Zeppelin”. He ignores me and says ‘I saw them in ’71 and ’74, absolutely…’ and he shakes his head in wonderment of the memory ‘…did you ever see them?’ ‘Me? No, never, but the film is good, about the early days up to the second album. It’s worth seeing. I saw it in Eastleigh last week.’ ‘Yeah OK. Zeppelin are the best. Saw Deep Purple as well. All those, they were the best. Great memories. You will NEVER get better than them – Zeppelin.’
He’s a fan so he gets the Black Dog riff as he’s walking off, then the Stairway To Heaven intro – he doesn’t look back, though…well, he does metaphorically, not literally. That’s just reminded me of a funny incident. After my carer and I had found our seats in the cinema (at the end of a row at the back) and were making ourselves comfortable, a young bloke who was obviously sitting in the same row, had to go by us and he said ‘Do you play the guitar in Winchester?’ Anyway, the next day, I was out here and this same bloke walked by and oh, how we both chuckled at the smallness of the world.
The coinage is slow. After 50 minutes I’ve accumulated less than £3 but it’s mid-week and it’s often like this here. Chichester’s better (for fuck’s sake, ANYWHERE’S better) so I might go there tomorrow. Amazingly, it picks up considerably, and after another 15 minutes I acquire another £9 and that’s enough; it’s too cold and I pack up.