The Buskers Crossing

The magnet of London had drawn me into the depth of its waterless well :
I was drowning.

When your moneys spent and you can’t afford the rent, its not easy living on hopes and dreams.
The price of a bed in the youth hostel was a better option than a hotel or a bed-sit flat. At least there were lots of interesting people from all over the world. Often at night we all got together to share our experiences.
Everyone seemed to like the idea I had of busking my way around different countries .

One night I met this Canadian called Dave. He was on his way back to Canada but offered me a ticket that he had. All I had to do was to pretend that I was he. The ticket was for a crossing over to Ireland on the Sealink Ferry. He also offered me his unused rail and bus passes.

I was very grateful and snapped them up.
Providence at last had come my way and I was thankful for this opportunity to get out of London. I made myself a promise that tomorrow would be the last day I would busk around London.
The next morning I made my way to Trafalgar Square. On the way I was amazed to find a Chinese festival on the streets complete with Kung Fu fighting warriors and dancing dragons. Cymbals were clashing and drums beating to an eastern theme. The fashion of the day was colourful and oriental. On the pavements people were going crackers. It was party time Chinese style and all traffic was stopped .
London police were present to keep control and they had their hands full. After a long stretch of the legs I walked down the steps at Trafalgar Square. I felt like a lion looking for a late lunch and sat down next to the statues where I performed about a dozen songs.
I realised after about thirty minutes that nobody really cared for what I was doing. My music was having no effect on the passers by, although I do think that the pigeons enjoyed my music.

To give them the benefit of the doubt I continued to busk for a further thirty minutes until my belly began to make strange rumbling noises and my voice turned from singing mellow blues to screaming out gravel rock.
Fuelled by lack of appreciation and anger I lifted my voice louder still.
I think people began to get the drift of where I was coming from.
Two young girls came over and made my day as they started to dance to a twelve bar number I was playing.
At least they seemed to be having a good time.
That was enough for me, I could sign off with that and made my way back to Carter Lane to make plans for my trip to Ireland.
So far I had managed to prove a point that busking would pay my way from place to place. This free ticket to Ireland was just the tonic I needed. It was my birthday and I was feeling good. Happy birthday to me.
Even though I had no friends, no money, no job, no home, no car, no girl friend, no nothing .In fact all that was a comforting thought.
Lucky for me I was still a bachelor.
With no ties or responsibilities there would be no turning back now.
It was to busk or bust or even die trying.
I had music to pave the way.
I closed my burning eyes and went to sleep.

The next morning as I woke I found someone had put some money in an envelope and left it beside my head.
What a surprise that was for me and a real moral booster.

That morning I purchased a new set of strings for my fender from Macaries in Charing Cross Road. The next move was making some enquiries from a travel agent about making the journey from Fishguard in Wales to Rosslare in County Wexford in the Irish Republic.
With the information I had I made my way to Liverpool Street station in London where a train would take me on the first leg of the journey.

When I got to Liverpool Street my wait was an all nighter because I’d just missed the 7pm train to Wales and the next one wasn’t until 7am the next morning. During the long cold wait I was trapped by drunks in the night, tipped by the police and froze by the wind.
At last I boarded the train to Fishguard.

It was October and winter would soon be back.
In fact in had already set in.
I took a seat on the train and said goodbye to the grey streets of London and watched time pass though the window where before long the green rolling hills of Wales came into view.

The crossing over the Irish Sea was a nightmare. There were waves the size of immature mountainous throwing the ship around like a piece of driftwood and I sat out on the deck throwing up everything in my stomach.
The morning was a nice thing to see and I felt relieved as the ferry landed in Rosslare harbour. It was great to get my feet on Irish soil.
It was good to hear my heartbeat and smell the fresh air and see the other side of the Irish Sea from dry land.

Rosslare was just as I had imagined it. There was no sign of life anywhere except for this little donkey that was tied to a tree near the youth hostel there in Rosslare. I still had some cash and was able to book in to the Irish IYH.
The hostel was situated at the top and highest point of this hill looking out to the sea. As I looked out through the mist of my bedroom window I could see the Sealink Ferry turn around and head back out towards Wales.
I stayed around sleepy Rosslare for three days and met two Australian travellers who were artists. They showed me some of their line drawings and sketches they had done of some of the places they had been to in Europe.
I told them of my mission to busk my way from place to place and we hit a common chord.

During my time in Rosslare I mapped out a buskers map of Ireland.
With a plan to take my music to the streets I headed off from County Wexford to Waterford, where they make the finest crystal glass items in the world.
I busked around the quay and walked around the city.
Once I was familiar with the city I booked into Bolton House, which was a guesthouse that was having serious renovations. Walls were coming down with sledgehammers and plaster and bricks littered the staircase to the room that I was staying in. Due to the state of the place I got a discount for the room. I decided not to hang around too long.

With my bus and rail pass the lengths and breadths of Ireland were now open to me and the wanderlust was burning beneath my feet.
I felt that I had to leave and soon headed for the bus depot on the far side of town across the bridge. I walked with my guitar past two Cathedrals, one Catholic and the other Protestant. Both structures of granite, similar in their appearance and yet unalike in many ways, religiously speaking in this beautiful country.

I walked along in the rain and wondered what time the bus came.
In my plan the next step of my journey was Cork.
Beside the bus depot was the train station at Waterford.
There was a bar at the depot and I went in and ordered a drop of the hard stuff, mind you I could have had a few but the bus was soon arriving.
When the bus left Waterford the bells in the lock tower rang out the time in
Loud chimes that scattered a clan of street pigeons from their sleep and dispersed them into the grey overcast sky. Some returned to perch back on the tower.
The bus driver was in no hurry to leave Waterford. I though he was going to stop at the pub and have a session for a moment.
It looked as if he was but them he changed his mind.

Finally we were on the road to Cork.
As we motored along I took out my guitar and played some blues and rock for all the passengers on board the crawler express to Cork.

Surely I though to myself, there must be some life in Cork. Some kind of appreciation for a busker from the other side of the world.
All I’d seen since arriving in Ireland was a donkey tied to a post, a guesthouse being knocked into rubble and street pigeons being scattered into the sky. Then I remember the sketches of the two Australian travellers and the bottom of my whiskey glass.

My mind was made up, I had decided that Cork was going to be the place where things would happen and I prayed for an answer to come and an end to this nightmare of a busker trying to survive on hopes and dreams.

The End

By Paul McCann