Diary Of A Busker Day 2611 Friday October 10th 2025 Winchester.
It’s Friday so it’s The Two Henrys at the top spot and I catch them in between songs and make a point of looking at their coinage/noteage and I bet there’s close to £200 in that guitar case. This provides the introduction to our short chat.
Me – ‘Wow, you look like you’re doing alright, gentlemen. You’ve got a few blue-eys there.’
Young Henry – ‘Blue-eys? Oh right, fivers, yeah.’
Me – ‘You’ve even got a purple one (£20 note). That’s amazing.’
Y.H. – ‘Yeah, when that went in I made a mistake.’
Me – ‘Put you off your form, I bet. I’m not surprised.’
Old Henry – ‘We’re just doing two more here if you want to set up, in a minute.’
Me – ‘That’s OK, I’m off somewhere else. I was here two hours yesterday. I don’t want to annoy anyone.’
Y.H. ‘I find that hard to believe you’d do that, Marvin.’
Me – ‘You’d be surprised.’
I set up down at Nando’s, propped up my album in the big flowerpot and was away. Back with the Fiesta Red Squier today, so a bit easier on the hands but I’ll be back out with the Faith soon enough, as I’ve just got a 12-string Shubb capo for it so I can do Here Comes The Sun without at least one string hanging outside the end of the capo. I hit paydirt with the fourth song in, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, when a woman chucked in a fiver. I knew that song would be a money spinner.
I wanted to do a two hour set but after an hour and twenty minutes, a chap from the clothes and flat caps stall on my left came over and said ‘Sorry mate, but at five there’ll be a van pulling up here to load up. Just thought I’d warn you. Sorry.’ I said that was fine as I was thinking of packing up anyway (well, in 40 minutes time). In fact, the van turned up prematurely, to the tune of SEVEN minutes prematurely so I made a quick exit. I did a quick coinage count and there was less than £20 so I decided to seek the rest of the day’s fortune in greener pastures. In other words, The Buttercross, which is now free. I did an hour there, sold an £8 CD to a rather miserable bloke who didn’t have any cash and who didn’t want to do the QR scanning thing – ‘Are there any cashpoints around here?’ ‘Yeah, there’s one just there, outside Lloyds.’ ‘Where’s that?’ ‘See that huge clock sticking out?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘It’s there. Lloyds. In fact, that’s my bank.’ Off he went, back he came and I’m richer to the tune of £7 (£1 to manufacture). I hope the CD cheers him up.