Day 2727
Sunday August 9th 2026
Winchester
A late session, starting after 6 o’clock so The Square is free and all mine. One technical point – playing the twelve string yesterday was quite hard work. I hadn’t played for a few days and my hands were not dealing well with the tension of standard tuning so I’ve tuned down a semitone to Eb and it’s so much better. I’ve been playing long enough so I should know this. Anyway, better late than never.
After an hour and a bit the coinage is OK and the temperature has come down a bit though it’s still warm. Pinky, who used to live on the other side of Greenhill Road comes from the alleyway as I’m doing Cavatina. He makes as if he’s got a rifle and fires at me. He comes up and asks if I’d like a drink. I say he’s welcome to buy me one – I’ll have it after I finish, so he goes to The Eclipse, returning with a glass of red and a lager in a plastic glass which he puts on a white chair he gets from a Three Joes table. No one was sitting on it – haha. ‘Cheers Pinky. Is that your real name?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Right, well that’s good enough for me.’
He sits on the bench behind and to my left and occasionally suggests songs for me to play, none of which I know. Well, I know Eddie Cochran stuff but no fingerstyle arrangements and I can’t just play the three chords of Summertime Blues over and over again because that would be bloody boring.
During Tales Of The Unexpected Pinky does the famous arm-moving thing the girl does, though it looks more like he’s attempting some karate!
Towards the end I take a couple of sips from the pint but it’s a dangerous maneuver when the glass is full and the plastic is thin. How anyone can do that without spilling the lot is beyond me, especially after a few!
Pinky gets to do another display of his armament prowess during James Bond then he’s off, and soon after, I pack up as I’ve now done the requisite two hours and it’s well after 8 o’clock.
As I’m shaking half a forest from the gigbag (I don’t know what sort of tree it is which overhangs the bit I play in but it literally chucks forth tons of tiny bits of foliage everywhere!), a woman comes up from one of The Orangery tables.
‘I really liked those last two you played. I know the first one (Here Comes The Sun) but what was the other one?’
‘Oh, that was one of my own.’
It was The Pirouettist, which I hadn’t played for awhile. Anyway, that cheered me up. The takings cheered me up as well. £40.70.