Day 2746
Tuesday September 29th 2026
Southampton
Back to the big city and I’m hoping for a better result, coinage-wise, than the last few times here. I’ve got the dinky ALTO Professional Busker amp, which I can just about carry from the house to the station and from the station to the mall entrance. It means I’ve got to stick all the other paraphernalia in the gigbag pockets – the telescopic stool just about fits in and I was thinking of leaving it behind to lessen the weight but I stuck it in at the last minute, thinking I’ll need it if my back starts to ache. As it is, I could have sat on the concrete round bit as there was no one set up there.
It got off to a very promising start when an elderly man pushing his wife in a wheelchair stopped to buy both CDs midway through the first song, so that’s the train fare sorted straight off and a few quid left over. Then another bloke bought a CD – wow, what’s going on?! Then a familiar face because it seems no matter where I go, I can never really get out of Winchester. It’s the slightly portly bloke who works at the gospel hall at the bottom end of Winchester High Street, and who I’ve seen for years, probably since when I started sixteen years ago next month. He’s come to Southampton to get his iPhone 13 fixed – he requests his usual, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and at the end asks ‘Do you think George Harrison was a good guitarist?’ ‘Yeah, he was great and he was the best slide player ever and that’s what I think, anyway.’
…and the dosh keeps coming in. I got a Scottish tenner from a young woman. It’s legal tender but I’ll get it changed at the bank just to be on the safe side.
I’m doing Space Oddity and a middle-aged bloke sits down on the bench nearby. He’s wearing a Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars T-shirt so what I’m playing must be registering. I mean, it’s not like some of these teenagers (and younger) who wear Led Zeppelin T-shirts but have got no idea what the riff to Whole Lotta Love sounds like – because they’ve never heard it and are just wearing the T-shirt because it’s trendy, or whatever. Anyway, this bloke comes up at the end and says ‘You can dedicate that to me!’ which is amusing and fair enough but then he buggers off with no donation.
Then there’s the young bloke who sits on the concrete to the right of me while I’m messing around with Blackbird. He starts singing but at the wrong spot which flummoxes me so I stop playing. He says ‘Don’t mind if I sing, do ya?’
‘Ah…no, you’re alright.’
‘Do you have a mic? Do any singing?’
‘Sometimes, yeah, but not today. I’m travelling light.’ In fact, there wasn’t room in the gigbag for the mic stand so I might have to work that one out.
‘But you do sometimes?’
‘Yeah, just to break up the set but no, not today. Just instrumental guitar.’ And with that I start something else and he bellows out something so I stop and give him the Naylor glare, which I try and avoid but sometimes…anyway, he gets up and wanders off.
One last meeting is worth a mention. Near the end a kid comes up – ‘You’re really good.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No, I mean it. How long you been playing for?’
‘About two hours and ten minutes.’
‘No, I mean, like, when did you start playing the guitar.’
‘I know what you meant. Oh, a long time ago. How old are you?’
‘Eleven.’
‘Right, well I started playing when I was around sixteen and I’m sixty-four, so that’s a long time ago.’
‘Well, keep practising, learn more songs.’ This really makes me laugh.
‘Yeah, OK. I do get a lot of practising in but yeah, thanks for the advice!’
‘It’s OK, you’re doing well, just keep practising and learn more songs.’
‘Yeah OK, cheers!’
Well, you’re never too old to take advice…and never too young to give it?!
I was going for a full 2 1/2 hours but my ears had had enough after two hours and twenty minutes. I was starting to hear notes that weren’t there and it was all sounding a bit discordant and I know why. I’d gradually turned up the volume on that dinky little amp and it was too much for my poor ears. But that means I can take that amp anywhere, however noisy anywhere might be, and play and be heard and I’m wondering if that’s why the coinage was so amazingly high, as it was a few days ago in the hometown…when I’d pissed off the woman who lives at the top flat. I mean, she’d heard me for 15 years and only had a go at me then.
The profit was an incredible £87.27. Unprecedented for the big city.