Day 2718
Sunday July 12th 2026
Winchester
There’s a bloke and his girlfriend in MY traditional spot in The Square. For shame! He’s got long hair and beard, plays the guitar and sings and I’m sure I’ve seen him a few times before. A nice bloke. He preempts my question and says they’ve just set up and will be there an hour/hour and a half, depending on how it goes. Fair enough, I wish him/her the best of luck and make my way down Market Street to the flower seller’s alleyway, which just happens to be free.
As I’m setting up, that tall, white-bearded weird bloke turns up. I think he once said his name was Zee or Zed. Anyway, he says ‘You going to play any Jimi Hendrix?’ ‘Not really…well, I do Purple Haze but I haven’t played it on this guitar for ages.’
‘Ah, just play the crowd-pleasers, eh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, you’re a lot more popular than you think.’
‘Well, I hope so!’
He joins the down and outs on the square concrete block a few yards to my right.
Not long after I start, just after the Gymnopedie, one of the others on the bench – the shirtless “Mr Thank YOU” he comes up and puts his face far too near mine – I get the full effect of his beery, fag-ish breath.
‘Happy tunes…just want happy tunes’ he says and walks off back to the bench, sits down raises his hands to the air and mouths the words ‘Happy tunes.’ And this is why I really shouldn’t accept money from people like him, because I don’t want to feel as if I owe him anything.
After awhile someone must have phoned the police because the down and outs were getting a bit out of control – raising their voices, arguing, and Big Neil and a woman copper turned up to tell them off. Mr Thank You was wielding an almost empty bottle of wine about and I think it’s illegal to drink like that in public? I’m not sure, but Neil was pointing to it.
After that, a woman off her face was attempting to dance in front of me, soon joined by one of the men. They’re all off their nut and it’s not a pleasant place to be so when the hour strikes I pack up. I’ve made around £13 – and £10 was in the form of two fivers from a woman near the end, and thank god for her.
I walk back up to The Square but the bloke and his girlfriend are still there. I decide to take a rest just inside in the cathedral grounds, have my squash and listen. He’s got quite a nice voice, quite a high one but melodious…very miserable, though, what he’s singing. I don’t recognise any of it. Maybe it’s his own stuff.
I decide to do an hour down the road next to the phone box at the other entrance to the cathedral grounds, and why not, there’s a constant stream of people coming in and out of the grounds. Unfortunately, none of them give a toss about the music. Sorry, almost none. After 50 minutes I get a pound!
Ah, I almost forgot. Just before that, a convertible car coming down from The Square stops at the corner and a man older than me, juts his head towards me and says ‘Marvin, your Third Man is one of the most popular on my playlist!’ Bloody hell, it’s John Knutson, who recorded me in 2011 (I think) just after I started busking! I used to sell a five song CD he did for me before I got my other ones made – the ones I’ve been selling since 2014 or something like that.
So, at least I got a compliment!
And that was that, £1 for an hour’s honest work. At least I tried. The only thing left to do is extract a six inch twig from inside the guitar. Which took a certain degree of dexterity, I can tell you. I just managed to get two of my fat fingers in, far enough to grab the offending article which was lying on the bottom, right underneath the soundhole. And it took most of the dexterity to get it at just the right place because there’s no way that twig was going to come up just by shaking the guitar upside down.
Total coinage £14.80