Marching orders

WHEN the boss says “go and find t h o s e buskers” and you can’t think of an excuse quickly enough, there’s only one option.

A-hunting buskers you must go.

I was going to need every ounce of experience and skill acquired over my seven-year career as a journalist for this assignment.

Our photographers had tried on several occasions to track the buskers down and I even heard regional TV and some national newspapers were on the trail.

But they didn’t have the advantage I had. Having grown up on the mean streets of Richmondshire’s historic market towns. I knew them like the back of my hand.

But first for some background. Earlier this month, The Northern Echo published a story about a group of eastern European accordion-playing buskers causing irritation in Richmond.

Shopworkers complained that the street performers knew only two tunes – and they played those badly.

One was When The Saints Go Marching In and the other was an indecipherable ditty. Community leaders were urged to take action to have them moved on.

Then, earlier this week, came a development.

Buskers using the same modus operandi had been spotted in Leyburn.

A plan to make the buskers undergo auditions was also revealed.

It was then that the editor demanded the buskers be found.

First stop was Leyburn, were the trail was warmest. I popped into Towlers newsagents to buy a notebook.

Staff were friendly, but knew little.

“I’ve not seem them for a while,” one woman said.

“I don’t really mind them,” said another.

I drew another blank outside the Co-op supermarket, where I knew they had been spotted recently.

I also knew the buskers had performed outside Lamberts the florists.

“They play right outside the door from 9am to 5.30pm – it’s the same tune . . . but not a tune, if you know what I mean,” a woman said.

Staff also confirmed what I had heard previously – that the group, which includes two men, a woman and a teenager – arrived and left in a black Audi.

Staff also filled in another blank by naming the mystery second song. It was The Anniversary Waltz.

Just before I left, staff said that a busker had once asked to change his coins into notes at the end of the day. He had made £60. “Six zero?” I asked in disbelief, before wandering over to see Sergeant Stuart Grainger at Leyburn police station.

He admitted that, legally, the buskers weren’t doing much wrong.

Musically though, they seemed to be getting little right.

If the buskers were about in Richmond, they were hiding from the cold in one of the town’s many tea shops or hairdressers.

Sophie Hazell, human resources officer at local business the city secret, who drew up a petition against the buskers, said she had heard reports of the buskers playing in Northallerton. Another false trail I wondered?

Business was brisk at Tesco, in Catterick Garrison, where another sighting had been reported, but the buskers had possibly been banished as there was no sign of them.

What to do now? Return to the office empty handed?

Or push on regardless? I’m no quitter, and since expenses are paid by the mile, the quest continued.

Northallerton was busy. Very busy. Just the sort of place a busker might like. I walked up the High Street, more in hope than anything else.

And then I heard it. Above the hum of the traffic and chatter of shoppers was the unmistakable sound of someone losing their temper.

I was right. Outside M&S an elderly gentleman was berating someone. “Play something else,” he shouted. “You’re doing my head in.”

The target of the verbal assault was a small man playing an accordion. I had found my quarry. I didn’t know whether to interview him or hug him.

Despite the man speaking next to no English, I discovered that his name was Alexandru Penica. He came from Romania, but was living in Newcastle.

He didn’t play in Leyburn or Richmond, but his amigos (as he referred to them) did.

I asked him lots of other questions, but if he understood, he didn’t let on. He just played and smiled.

And smiled some more when people put money in his box.

I had started my assignment with so many questions.

Who were the buskers? Where did they come from? Did they really know only two songs?

Some had been answered, but one puzzle remained.

If, as the shopworkers said, the buskers had been playing for the past two years, eight hours a day, six days a week, why were they still so awful?