Day 2739
Sunday September 6th 2026
Winchester
A late afternoon session in the usual Sunday spot…and my rapt audience this time are two young boys belonging to a couple at an Old Vine table. They don’t sit but stand in front or walk about. One says he’s got a guitar and has learnt one song.
‘That’s really good and now you can learn another one then another one and you will get better all the time, every time you play something, it’ll sound a bit better.’ He asks how many songs I know so I pick up my set list – ‘Wow, you know all those? How many are there?’
‘Well, there’s not more than forty, I think, but I play them all the time so it never seems like a lot!’
‘How long have you been playing?’
‘Around an hour.’
‘No, I mean…how long…when you started playing the guitar?’
‘I know what you meant! Oh…it was long before you were born. I started when I was about sixteen and I’m sixty-four now, so that’s…almost fifty years!’
‘You’re really good.’
‘Thank you. The thing is, I get a lot of practise and it’s like what I just said, every time you play something, it gets a bit better.’
…and here comes Graham. He sits on the bench behind and to me left, across the path from The Old Vine. I know what he’s going to say/request after I finish the one I’m playing and I’m bloody well ready for it – The Robinson Crusoe Theme, which I play not too badly today. Phew. And I’m justly rewarded with a tenner – a lot of money for a song, when you think about it.
One amusing moment. A man came up and asked if I was going to play much longer and I immediately thought it was a negative comment and got on the defensive – ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because we want to sit down and listen and thought you might be going.’
‘Oh right! Sorry, I thought you might want me to turn down…or leave! I’ve had that before, you know.’
‘Really? Can’t think why.’
‘Well, there are certain people in certain shops around here who don’t like me much. I mean, I’ve been around a long time and not everyone like it.’
So the bloke was paying me a compliment but my natural instinct was to think he was going to tell me to get lost. In fact, he sat down with his wife and had a drink then after an hour came over and gave me a fiver and offered to buy me a drink, which I accepted (I said I’d keep it by me and have it after I finished).
‘What would you like?’
‘Oh, something cold…they do Italian beers, I think. A Moretti or Peroni? I’m not sure what they do…Cruzcampo?’
‘Yeah, they do Cruzcampo, I think. Right then, I’ll get you one.’
And so he did, and you’ll never guess but it came in a proper glass – a proper Cruzcampo one and not an impossible to hold plastic job.
So the next time anyone ask#s me what I would like to drink, it’s a Cruzcampo.
The two hour and twenty minutes yielded an acceptable £38.70.