Day 2749
Saturday October 3rd 2026
Winchester
In The Square for two hours – no longer as I don’t want anyone else coming out and telling me off!
An American woman comes up – ‘I really like that one you did just before the last one…the Fourth Man Theme.’
‘No, the Third man, you mean. The Fourth Man was the guy who came after!’
‘Oh right, well we haven’t got enough instrumentals these days but I really like that one – Eddie Cochran did that.’
‘Ah! That’s what you’re thinking of. Eddie Cochran did The Third Man but he called it The FOURTH Man!’
‘Oh yeah! We went to Chippenham, where he died.’
‘Yeah, somebody took me there a few years ago because I’m a big Eddie Cochran fan and there’s a plaque there and I tried to do that – his version that he called the Fourth Man Theme, when I was really young in Canada. I had this basement room where I slept and I had all my music stuff there and I worked it out – all the guitar bits and I had two cassette recorders and recorded one guitar then played that back and recorded another guitar live so I had two guitar tracks then did played the recording of the two tracks and put another on the first cassette then played that back and did another and by the time I got to the fourth guitar, the quality was terrible – there was so much static or whatever, you could barely hear anything but it was good fun!’
A man comes up. He was having a pint outside The Old Vine with a mate and he kept looking at me, smiling, so I thought I must know him but can’t recall exactly who he is.
‘Er…I’m Marcus’s friend.’
‘Yes of course. I thought I knew you. How is he?’
‘He’s alright, he’s in a care home in Otterbourne.’
‘Yes, I know. I remember you told me…how is he?’
‘He’s alright…he falls around, falling down quite a bit but there you go.’
‘Right…well please say hello from me.’
‘Yeah, sure.’
This always amuses me. Whenever I see a bunch of young women who’ve obviously had a few (drinks, I mean), I do the pre-chorus thing to Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (da, da – da, da – da, da da – da, da) and they ALL know what it is and they ALWAYS start singing it – ‘I LOVE YOU BABY, AND IF IT’S QUITE ALRIGHT…’ then trail off because they can’t remember what comes next! Anyway, a bunch of them are walking up Market Street; high heels, micro skirts, tits out – wine glasses in hand, and they don’t disappoint. Of course, they all start singing the chorus way too soon, as usual.
It must be the Week Of Giving Gifts To Buskers. Yesterday I got that lovely guitar pin and today a Spanish couple donated a tiny gold bar. And when I say it’s tiny, I mean 1 centimetre long and 1/2 a centimetre wide. And it’s not gold but anyway, a nice gesture. I can’t remember if there was a more substantial monetary donation but I was so blown away by the gold bar, anything else might not have registered.
No matter, it was a profitable two hours, bringing in a total of £53.93, including two £10 QR code donations. In fact, there were three of those QR’s but one never came through.