Day 2741
Sunday September 13th 2026
Winchester
Intermittent rain delayed the session until just after 5 o’clock so there weren’t too many about but still a handful of tables to be entertained. Amazingly, there is some applause (definitely out of towners!) from very early. One man older than me and sitting on his own comes across after Space Oddity and says he hasn’t got any change but I can have two 1st class stamps instead. Well, that’s a new one – I’ve never been donated stamps before but as a 1st class stamp is £1.80 so that’ll do fine, cheers!
The clapping is kept up throughout the hour and a half – I only intended doing an hour but extended it as the coinage wasn’t that great…but wait, I’m about to put the guitar away when a man comes up from The Eclipse clutching a £20 note – ‘Oh, you going now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh no…look, you couldn’t do Stairway To Heaven for me? I see you got a twelve-string. It is, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, it is…um.’
‘Oh go on, just for ten minutes, yeah? You know that bit with the twelve-string?’
‘Yeah sure, OK. I mean, I don’t have a proper version worked out, just some of the main guitar bits.’
‘Yeah yeah, that’s great. Anything mate!’
And with that, the lovely purple note is mine. I do a more or less chronologically accurate version of the song, stopping abruptly when it gets to the big guitar solo at the end because I haven’t got a hope in hell of making that sound listenable with just one guitar. Down at the Eclipse, my man gives me the thumbs-up so that’s fine. He comes up, thanks me and says he’d buy a CD if he had some more money. No problem, he can have a CD – I mean, he’s just given me half the money I’ve made today.
During the packing up, a woman comes across and hands me a fiver (will wonders never cease?) – ‘Thank you, this is our last day in England, such a nice way to end our stay as we are going back to Berlin tomorrow.’ ‘Oh really? I’m going to visit some friends in Berlin in November. Maybe bump into you then’ I say. She laughs and says goodbye. ‘Yes, goodbye…auf wiedersehen!’ And just before I head off, the stamp bloke comes over and gives me one more, so that’s the Christmas cards sorted.
Total earnings: £42.75 (not including the £5.40 in stamps).