Day 2704
Wednesday June 17th 2026
Winchester
Firstly, there’s a gear upgrade. I’ve got fed up with that new Hartwood amp. It’s nice and small but it can’t seem to handle the 12-string and is distorting at quite a low volume. And I was comparing it with the much bigger Cube Street yesterday, with both guitar and vocal mic in each (the gig on the weekend whetted my appetite to do more singing) and the Street Cube wins hands down. I’d send the Hartwood back and get a refund but I’ve put some nicks in it so I’m going to have to keep it. So I’m going to use the Cube Street – which is about time as I’ve had if for two years and used it a handful of times…which means I have to upgrade to the bigger case – the shopping trolley which was actually bought to transport the Cube Street amp about. I wasn’t looking forward to dragging the heavy Faith case and amp into town but as it turns out, it wasn’t too bad. The tyres are ten times as big as the other case, so it’s easy to cart round and because the tyres are rubbery, they’re a lot quieter on pavement, especially the cobblestones. Even so, I kept catching one of the wheels with my heel so I had to refine my walking style, taking quicker, shorter strides. In other words, mincing. Quentin, eat your heart out!
Not only all that, but I’ve got a new capo – a G7 12-string one with a compensated pad which is sort of serrated so there’s less pressure on the lower octave strings so they don’t go sharp when the capo’s on. It’s such a brilliant but obvious design you’d think someone would have thought of it fifty years ago.
I set up at the crossroads – why not, I haven’t been there for ages…and it was bloody ages before I got any coinage, and when it came it wasn’t a lot – a twenty pence piece. And that was it for the first hour! I was beginning to think there was something wrong with the sound so I tried a few amp settings before going back to the one I started with, the Fender one. Even so, I asked a young bloke sitting down outside Pret A Manger – ‘Does this sound alright?’ ‘yeah, sounds good, man’ he said, so that’s good enough for me.
It picked up though. A man gave a tenner – I didn’t recognise him but I’d met him before – ‘You played at our garden party…(me, looking at him blank)…in Swanmore…(me, still blank)…the St Georges Foundation.’ Ah, now I remembered – ‘Oh yeah, of course. Where you had Mr Bean’s mini!’
‘Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, the reason we haven’t had you again is because we haven’t had a party this year, so that’s some compensation for you. Please don’t take it personally, we just haven’t organised anything!’
After that, I had a couple of more notes – two fivers and a fiver through the QR code, so that was all fine.
I think there must have been something in the water, as the down and outs were more than usually out of it. Firstly, one of the women staggered up and held out her hand which I touched as briefly as possible as it was well grubby. I mean, who knows where that’s been…probably in a few bins, at least. She said ‘I just wanna say I realllllyyyy love yer music, OK?’
Then, a couple of the blokes walked by and one – he’s fair-haired and wears a baseball cap, he was staggering about and slammed his head right into the pillar outside the Pret doorway. I could even hear the impact! He wobbled about for a bit then staggered down Market Street and did it again, collided with another Pret pillar! God, it was so funny.
The requisite two hours accumulated £31.19.