Busking

;D

Well to my experience busking is relatively recent thing. You got buskers in the street OUTSIDE of some tube station even before the war. But they were generally small bands of men playing various different instruments or even barrel organs and hurdy-gurdy's. You never saw buskers (or beggars) within a tube station then. The only on-train entertainment you got was the occasional drunk yodelling to all and sundry. especilally around christmas/new year. Some of these folk had beautiul voices too. I remember one occassion when I was guard and a guy got on my train at Mile End quite lateish in the evening who was obviously bottled. He was however very well dressed and not obnoxious at all. He was sitting in the centre cross seats of the car behind my position. After a couple of stop's he suddenly started to sing "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" in one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. He was carrolling a young lady sitting diagonally opposite himself and whilst he sang tears were rolling down his cheeks. He completed the German version and when he finished he asked in broken english if we would join him. There were about 20 people in the car including me and he started to sing again and to my amazment everybody else DID join in, even the young ones. We all ended up singing all sorts of songs (but not rude ones) such as "Lili Marlene" and "Roll out the Barrell" which made the journey very pleasant indeed.. I think the gentleman was Jewish as he got off at Elm Park and as he passed me he said in German (or maybe Yiddish) "Gute Weinachten mein freund und Gott Mit Uns" which touched me very deeply indeed. That was on a Christmas Eve. Very fond memories of that.