Day 2671
Monday March 23rd 2026
Winchester
The young bloke on the keyboard seems to have monopolised the top spot. No matter, on Mondays, Dave the flower seller isn’t at his spot opposite M&S, so I can set up…and it gets off to a cracking start – I sell a £10 CD before I even start playing! It’s to a man who loves 12-string guitars –
‘What’s that you’ve got?’
‘A Faith Venus. It’s ten years old. I bought it off my friend. She wasn’t playing it and was going to sell it to a music shop in Cheltenham and I didn’t want her to do that so I bought it off her and it wasn’t cheap so I’m trying to make it pay for itself.’
‘Yeah, it’s great. I love all that stuff. You know, The Byrds.’ Cue the intro to Mr. Tambourine Man.
‘Yeah! and Jimmy Page did some stuff.’ Cue the 12-string riff and the chords. That was enough to frighten the old couple off the bench opposite.
‘Yeah, great! You know they’ve released Crosby Still and Nash At The Filmore?’
‘No, I didn’t know that.’
‘Yeah, ’cause it was never released.’
‘Maybe Crosby didn’t like it – he was a funny bloke. maybe that’s why they’ve released it now, after he’s gone.’
‘Yeah, could be. It’s brilliant.’
‘I must try and hear it, then.’
‘Yeah…hey, can I buy a CD?’ He sure can. Great – a £9 profit and I haven’t hit a note…unfortunately, I didn’t hit as many notes as I normally would because right after I started up Albatross, the construction blokes at the other end of the alley also decided to start up. They’ve got a digger that started beeping – the same sound as when vans reverse – BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, every godforsaken two seconds. It would go off for a minute, then if I was lucky, stop for a minute but then bloody well go off again BEEP, BEEP, bloody BEEP!!! I stuck it for fifteen minutes then I could take it no more and I packed up and went up the road to the crossroads…five minutes later and I’m starting up again and would you believe it – BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!!! There’s a van reversing on Market Street! But it’s OK, he buggered off after a minute. Phew, my head was about to explode.
This is one of the scourges of modern life – bloody beeping coming out of everything! Drives me round the bend!
Anyway, I did just under an hour there and accumulated another £9, so with the CD sale, that was quite acceptable. And I’m back on the bike, partly because the sound of the case wheels on the pavement was getting on my wick after a week or so. If it’s not one thing, it’s another!