Sometimes a busk teaches you that you need to have faith and not listen to the story in your head. The Durham busk coincided with Storm Callum. The weather forecast on 13 October at 11am was described as ‘strong winds and thundery showers’, with 100% chance of rain and 42 mile per hour winds. At 10.45am I was pacing up and down our AirBnB staring at the rain, thinking how nobody would come and it would be a miserable hour.
I arrived in the Market Place and had a little shelter by Tesco. I hadn’t played a note before someone came to me, said they had read about me in the paper and gave me a £20 note. Infact, Durham was the busk most likely to donate notes and the only one where I had to dry the money off afterwards! Mark was doing a sterling job as a busking buddy as both bucket holder and flamingo umbrella holder, although the flamingo’s eye fell off part way through the busk which provided some amusement.
The people of Durham were also very friendly and made some lovely remarks. My good flute friend Mike popped down and bought me a cup of tea and Gavin from the Northern Echo took some photos and a video. You can read/watch his report online. I also used to conduct a flute choir whilst I was in Durham at university and the current president came down to donate, even though we had never met. Humanity is a wonderful thing.
We raised over £100 which means that we have now broken the £1500 barrier. The Samaritans of Central Durham are refurbishing their centre to improve it for their drop in service users and this money will go towards that. My aim is to get to £2000 in the last two busks. Please help me out if you can by donating for November’s busk on my JustGiving page or coming along to my last busk on 22 December in Stapleton (Leicestershire)
I hope you enjoy the photos below: me, when I graduated, cloudy Durham, my busk and me when I played in the University orchestras (thanks Chris Herbert for the picture).
The fundraising flautist 