Day 2641
Friday January 16th 2026
Winchester
Another break in the rain – no chance of that yesterday, and the top spot is free. Amazingly, it’s an almost sunny sky…unfortunately there’s a steady breeze which makes the 9 degrees feel rather chilly and the hands don’t like it straight away.
A young bloke stands by while I’m doing the first song. He approaches at the end – ‘I think I’ve seen you on a YouTube video. Do you have a channel?’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘I knew it! I’ve seen your video of that one…da da, da da, I love you baby, you know?’
‘Oh right, yeah.’
‘Yeah, and I was learning that then I took up the pedal steel guitar and I’ve been you know, spending all my time on that, you know.’
‘Oh right, well, a pedal steel, that’s difficult. Where are you from?’ (I knew he was from out of town. I know EVERYONE).
‘Brighton.’
‘Right, well…’
‘Anyway, you’ve got CDs…sorry, I’d get one but I haven’t got any change. have you got a website where I could buy something?’
‘Well, I’ve got websites but you can’t buy the CDs there, well not these ones but you can contact me. Take a card.’
I point down to the business cards in the case – he picks one up.
‘Great, have a nice day!’
‘Cheers, you too.’
Will I actually hear from him? The odds are 10 to 1. Actually more like 100 to 1 but I live in hope.
The coinage is slow – over an hour in but only around £6 – and the fingers are becoming painful with the cold. I carry on because I’m not coming out here for anything under a tenner…but the coinage doesn’t pick up, maybe another couple of quid. I solve the cold problem (a bit) by putting the hands in the trouser pockets for a few seconds after every song and it really does help (a bit)…but after an hour and a half, I’m fairly done in and starting to make mistakes because I can’t feel the fingertips. I’ve got around £12, which isn’t very good for an hour and a half but sod it, that’s it.
But no sooner had I thought that when a woman of around eighty comes up and hands me two tenners, saying ‘That’s for all the times I haven’t given you anything.’
Well, it doesn’t need to be said how profuse my thanks are so I won’t say it but the handing over of the notes and my joy was witnessed by a man who was in charge of a tourist group. He said ‘Oh, that’s good isn’t it?!
I said ‘It sure is. It had been going slow and I was about to pack it in and then this. It’s one of those…(here I lift my arms in the air and say “Hallelujah!”) sort of moments, you know?’
Well, I was so revived I did another fifteen minutes and got a couple more donations, putting the total to £35.20, and that was it. I book-ended the set with Can’t Help Falling In Love, to mark the occasion of seeing Elvis later on tonight at the Winchester Theatre (the carer’s birthday treat). I think this one’s a fat Greek.