Diary Of A Busker Day 2501 Monday March 10th 2025 Winchester.
Yesterday was a good day, with exemplary coinage/noteage and a minimum of mistakes after a long break and I’m hoping for a repeat performance today. The weather is again fine (it gets colder for the rest of the week, apparently) and the top spot is free, so that’s all good so far…unfortunately, it becomes apparent that yesterday’s coinage bonanza is NOT to be repeated today. It’s around the half hour mark before I get anything – a pound coin, and it doesn’t improve the whole time I’m there.
A bunch of foreign students turn up and I get a couple of donations from them. One girl offers two salt and pepper sachets, which I politely decline. They hang around for a few minutes then disperse…a young guy comes up and says he’s thinking of busking and asks how much stuff I need to take. I point to my bike – ‘I come into town on that so I don’t want to have too much stuff with me. Everything goes into this suitcase; the amp, the books, the stool, CDs, all this stuff, and the guitar’s in the case and that goes on my back and that’s it. I can’t take anything else.’
I have an embarrassing few minutes when I make a mess of Julia Florida, which I didn’t play yesterday. There were three bits where I just forgot what to play and panicked and played a load of wrong notes and it was a job trying to recover but I got through it and someone even donated – I think they must have not heard the crap bits, or maybe they did and it was sympathy money! Anyway, I’ll have to sort that one out at home before I attempt it out here again.
The students turn up again. A load of them sit behind me on the monument, the rest hang about the street, the salt/pepper sachet girl now offers me some sort of scratch card, which I again politely decline. A lot of them have bought some coloured plastic guns and shoot little missiles at each other. I take the cue and go into Bond which completely goes over their heads. Of course it does, they’re fucking 50 years too young. After a lot of shooting and shouting they bugger off and I carry on for a bit longer to get to the two hour mark and then I’ve had enough. The donations come to £10.10 – a disaster, but then again, it’s Monday and there are no tourists. The weekends are a different story, thank fuck!