A few carols, Xmas 2020.                        

     By March 2020, Covid had well and truly reached Britain and figures were shooting up to a frightening degree every single day. Everyone was affected. In my small corner of London and the world, the Musician’s Union set up the Freelance Musician’s Hardship Fund, contributions welcome from anywhere, to help those without protected jobs somehow get through it all. ‘It all’ lasted for about 3 years.

     In aid of the Fund, I bought a sandwich board, coloured chalk pens, made a smaller sign to put in my case, filled a small bag with ten pound coins and was good to go. I didn’t dress up as Santa.

     It was twenty-two carols in the end, more than a few. I’d made a list of as many as I could think of, with a few suggested keys to play them in. I set up at my post just outside Arnos Grove tube station, facing out towards the buses. They mostly stopped to let passengers off a little further down, but one of my cues to start playing was the sight of a 251, which discharged all its contents just to my right, so anyone going into the tube would have to walk straight past me. I set up my sandwich board, assembled the hooter and tipped the bag of coins into the open trombone case, which was propped against the fence in front of me. Old busker’s ploy, to have some money in there to start with, to encourage people to add to it. I’d take off £10 from the count-up afterwards.

Thursday 10^th December

     The plan was to do slots in the early evenings, as people were coming back from town. Due to the pandemic, a new thing called Working Remotely, i.e. working from home, had come in, so throughout the year the tubes had dwindled to way less than their usual capacity. But as we weren’t in a Lockdown at this particular time (though there was another tight clamp just round the corner), perhaps a few more people were travelling, to do extra shifts at the office or buy Xmas presents. Parties were strictly forbidden because of distancing, for most people…

     My initial idea was to do two sets of half an hour, with a break in between, but it soon became clear that this was totally impractical. If I played solidly, just a set of back-to-back carols, then half the time – no, more than that – would be spent playing to nobody. Within about 10 minutes I’d realised that it only made sense to play anything when people came out of the tube, or a 251 arrived. This meant that a lot of time was spent simply standing there waiting, but of course that’s easier on the chops. I could see through a window into the station, so I knew when passengers were about to appear in numbers, and I would immediately start playing. I wore a bright white jumper, so people could see me clearly in the winter darkness.

     I did two hours, and was amazed and delighted when I got home to discover that after removing my £10 float, I’d made £28.15. That seemed to me a pretty good first effort, and if I did ten days of this, which was a rough plan, that’d be getting on for £300 for the M.U. fund.

Friday 11^th December

     Only 75 minutes that day, but the telling factor was of course that it was Friday. People would be finishing their week, and would come off the tube on a Christmassy night in a good mood. This must have been the reason, because the eventual total was £46.48! I was thrilled to bits. That was over £75 in 2 nights; the outlook for the Fund was looking good. Another major factor for this spike came early on, when a woman fumbled in her purse for a little while (which means I have to keep playing, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, I can’t just stop while people are thinking of donating), then stooped by my case and carried on with her life. Another ploy is not to watch people while they’re donating, it would make them feel self-conscious. However, whenever anyone did put something in, I did a sort of salute of acknowledgment by raising the trombone while playing (which is a bit of a co-ordination feat, that didn’t always work. A few times I strayed away from the tune a bit whilst doing this manoeuvre). I didn’t have to time to acknowledge the lady with the purse, she was off into the night, but when I finished that particular carol I looked down and there was a note in the case. A brown one. She’d only gone and given a whole tenner. I was choked with gratitude

     We did a house clean on Saturday morning, which left no time for a lunchtime slot at the tube. Sunday I ignored, not many people would be travelling that day, I thought, even if it is getting close to Christmas. London was in Tier 3 at this time, and all extraneous travel was hugely discouraged. I think if I’d played the previous day in a world where there wasn’t a deadly pandemic going on and people were free to go wherever and whenever they wished, I may have made double the amount. But then the point of all this was to help the freelancers who’d suffered this year because of the virus, so the factors sort of cancel each other out.

Monday 14^th December

     Back to my post outside the tube to carry on the good work, but I only managed 45 minutes that day, as rain stopped play. It was one of those slow weather changes, where the evening just got gradually damper and colder and drizzlier, and I realised I had to leave it there. Apart from anything else, the felt pen sign in my trombone case had started to run badly, so now it was almost unreadable. No point if people can’t read why I’m there. £12.42.

Tuesday 15^th December

     A strong burst of 100 minutes, from 4 pm to 5.40. It started very well, with at one point more people throwing money in than walking by, but somehow after all that time, I’d made £24.49. Not as encouraging as the first day, though the same rate of donations. By this time it looked like, note-givers aside, I could expect an average of about £15/hour.

     Wednesday was thoroughly soaking, I couldn’t even leave the house, and it was doubtful if many others would have done either, especially in Tier 3.

     Thursday I was actually working, the annual Christmas Carol concert in St. Paul’s cathedral, and my first concert since February 7^th.

Friday 18^th December

     In general the public had been utterly uplifting, and I hope I’d uplifted them a bit too. But this night there was that common blight of buskers, the enthusiastic drunk. A young man, with a big recent scar on his forehead, he was encouraging, but unfortunately in that unpredictably dangerous way. I knew I’d have to tread carefully not to upset him if he wanted to talk when I needed to play. I’d explained about the Fund, and he thoroughly approved, ‘Fair play to ye’ (he was Irish), and he sat on a bench nearby with his can of poison. He called to me many times, and I think he was telling me where a better place to stand would be. After a while it seemed he’d moved on, but he came back, with his own sign. He recommended that I put this out front, and I’d make much more money that way. It was fairly incoherent, as was he, but the message was something about me having had a domestic with my missus, that she’d thrown me out, and that I now needed money. I was a bit angry about this, for many reasons, and told him I wasn’t going to do that. Then over his shoulder I saw a that tube had come in, and the station was producing punters like bees from a hive. I said ‘Sorry, there’s a train come in, I have to play now’, and he was disgusted. I’d rejected his offer of help and now I wouldn’t even talk to him. He disappeared again for a while, then returned to his bench, affronted.

     About quarter past 5 a lady seemed agitated nearby, looking about her nervously. I was playing at the time but she suddenly came right up to me and clutched my arm. You never interrupt a muso when they’re playing, but she was certainly stirred up enough to dismiss that. ‘I’ve heard the gypsies’ she breathed in my face, ‘I’ve heard them say they’re going to take your money. Please don’t let them do that.’ She was imploring, very genuinely on my side. I didn’t know until then that the bottom of the car park behind me was entirely taken up with caravans. Perhaps my mate with the ‘Domestic, X, please help’ (or whatever it said) sign was one of them. She let go of me and went off. This could be a problem. I certainly stood a lot nearer my case for the next few carols. But she and the drunk had taken the wind out of my sails, and I soon decided to stop and pack up quickly before anyone had a chance to pounce on my earnings.

     (So much for packing up quickly. On the first evening I’d only realised when I got home with my triumphant proceeds that every coin in my bag might be loaded with corona virus. Idiot. Great idea, this. I’d already handled them all by putting them in my bag. All I could think to do while counting them was to wear disposable gloves. So by now, the Friday gypsy evening, packing up meant hoisting the trombone case onto the wall next to me, putting on disposable gloves, scraping all the coins out of the case and into a bag, then taking off the gloves to put my trombone away, or I’d just be handling the instrument with the same surface as the coins. A bit of a routine, which it had taken me a couple of evenings to work out.)

     That Friday evening, £24.42, 7p short of my last outing. Not great, though the running total was now £136.37.

     And that, as it turned out, was that. I went down to the station for the last time the next day, at lunchtime on Saturday the 19^th, to see if there were midday crowds of people heading into town to do last-minute Christmas shopping. It was virtually deserted. I only half got my trombone out, and looked inside the station. I watched two trains come in. From the first one, only two people came out, from the second only four. And not everyone who left the station would turn my way, of course, half would go in the opposite direction. I considered changing spots, to down where the main bus stop is, but it was the weekend, there were hardly any buses around, it felt like a deserted windswept council estate. Then as I was wondering if I should hang around and see if more trains produced bigger cargos of passengers, the bus that would take me home turned up, so I got on it.

     This felt pretty disheartening when I got back home. Playing the previous night with the possibility of being robbed, yet coming home with £24 was less downcasting than turning up to a virtually abandoned station and not playing anything at all. I wondered about having a final stab in my usual early evening slot, and when Helen asked me later if I was going to do this I wandered into the kitchen to look at the weather in the garden with the recent big news that we were all going to be in Tier 4 (who knew there was a Tier 4?) from tomorrow, so nobody would be going anywhere near the tubes or buses after that; this really was my last chance. And just then the rain started pattering on the kitchen roof, so that was that. From an early hopeful target of £300 I’d made less than half: £136.37. But there’s only so much you can do.

Ups and downs

     Despite not doing as many stints as I originally hoped, and with a rather dismal fade-out, most of all this was hugely positive. The public were great.

     I think it was the third day that I had to force myself to go out. Inside was warmth and the snooker was on, who wants to go and stand outside a rainy tube station playing the same tunes, albeit 22 of them. But immediately I set up that day, a small Asian lady and her two young children stopped and put a few coins in my case. This was great, but I felt she wasn’t getting much value from me, as I hadn’t played a note yet. So the two children took turns when I asked them which Christmas carol they’d like to hear. They were both of that too-shy-to-talk age, so both chose We Wish You a Merry Xmas, well, they hid behind their mother when it was suggested by her. My spirits were totally raised by all this; I was right to ditch the snooker.

     A very old couple hobbled slowly across the bus station forecourt, holding up one bus as it tried to drive through, and I wondered why they didn’t go round the pavement instead of stopping traffic, but they kept their slow progress, and kept going until they reached me and my case, into which they dropped some money. They’d come all the way over, to do that.

     At the other end of life’s span, I found the school children extremely generous. As they waited for their buses home a considerable number dropped whatever they could into my case. We’re supposed to grumble about the youth aren’t we, but they were very considerate.

     Two teenagers, only a few minutes into my first effort put some money in, yet I wasn’t playing at the time. So I asked them what they’d like to hear. I was pleased with my list and thought I’d pretty much covered everything. They said The Twelve Days of Christmas. Uh-oh. I explained to them that I couldn’t do that one as it has SO many verses, and I expected some disdain from them for that, but they simply thought about it and said ‘Fair enough.’ My one request and I couldn’t do it.

     The downs I’ve said already really. I could have done without the possibly-infected woman speaking right into my face, though she was only trying to help. And the drunk guy, with his dishonest suggestion of a sign pleading for help, well, he didn’t help. But the poor guy may well be homeless, so my woes are nothing.

     On the last day, when I planned for the first time to do a set in daylight, it was always the intention to wear my Christmas jumper, instead of the bright white woolly number. But my jumper has a picture of Rudolph being blown in a blizzard, hanging onto a sign saying To The Pub. If I’d worn it, even the arrow would have pointed in the right direction straight to The Arnos Arms. But of course these days the pub is shut.

     And if mentioning the rain on the kitchen roof seems a bit laboured, it was a sad end to what had been a mostly uplifting project.

     A good example of that was on the first day, when a chap came up and told me he used to be a trombone player. After a bit of chat – trombonists are always keen to meet others – I asked him if he still played, or whether his trombone was stuck under the bed. He said ‘It is. But hearing this has inspired me to get it out again and have a blow.’ Good news.

Lessons learned

1. What is the effect of a rising modulation on people; does it raise their spirits? Or generate more contributions? No.
2. Did people notice, especially here in London, my ‘aren’t-I-clever’ insertion of the theme tune of East Enders into Away in a Manger? No.
3. Play Ding Dog Merrily on high early on. After that my tongue gets too cold to play the fast bit in the middle.
4. And before playing it, because of the fast bit in the middle, take my right hand woolly glove off. Otherwise I’ll probably fumble and drop the slide.
5. Some tunes are harder than others. Save them for the larger crowds. Therefore, with Arnos Grove being only three stops from the northern terminus, so it won’t have filled up yet: Don’t Waste Jingle Bells On A Southbound Train.

P.S. for musos.

     Always a bit of a problem for me, that so many carols sound the same. Or they start the same anyway. At Arnos Grove I often set off playing a carol only to discover that I was in fact playing an entirely different one. The opening notes and rhythms are often so similar that by the time you’ve got a few bars in, well, it could go either way. I wouldn’t be surprised if I actually played ‘I Saw Three Ships A-Wassailing’ several times during these stints, or ‘Hark, The Herald Angels Sing in Royal David’s City’.  ‘Away in a Little Town of Bethlehem’ is the same, the first three notes are identical, and start on the same beat of the bar. ‘In Sussex Jubilo’ is another, in 6/8 with an upbeat, but one goes up and one goes down. Thank goodness for ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman’ in a minor key, ‘Silent Night’, lovely and slow, and even dreary old ‘White Christmas’, for all being original enough to stay apart from the rest.