Another regular busking-related occurrence is hearing another busker somewhere around the town centre playing ‘Wonderful Tonight’ by Eric Clapton. This happens approximately 80% of the time. I find it particularly grating because when I was working in a shop once, a man played it outside the shop for forty-five minutes without stopping. He just went round and round the same verses as if on an infinity loop.

Since extremely repetitive music is regarded as torture and a human rights issue, and is, for these reasons, not officially permitted in some prisoner of war camps, I felt justified in phoning the council and getting them to tell him to stop, which I would never do usually with any other musician, even if they were terrible, as long as they played a variety of different terrible music. This is because running to the authorities isn’t something I like doing, particularly as the way the council regulates busking in general appears to be designed to stop homeless people with recorders making the place look untidy. However, my only other alternative was to run out of the shop yelling , ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ and I think this might have frightened my customers a bit. Plus they might have stolen the lace tablecloths while I was out of the building.

Had it been any of the other regular staff working in the shop that day, however, I doubt they’d have noticed the repetition. They always, always listened to a double album of Abba on repeat all day on the shop stereo. It was as if they were on some sort of Abba drip-feed and if they weren’t provided with Abba while operating the till, they would faint or something. I was Left A Note About Taking My CDs Out At The End of the Day on the occasion that I accidentally left my Incredible String Band CD in the CD player. I think they must have got a bit of a shock.