Characters 2 Mervin the Busker

Another go at creating characters yielded this fellow. I post him up for no better reason than to know where I might find him should I need him.


I mean busking is a kind of, trying to get better... upbeat activity. You know, done with an energetic purposefulness with qualities of simpatico, laced with a morsel of musical talent. These are the basic elements required of the busker to draw in the punters and to tempt purses and wallets to be loosened and to allow a fluttering of notes a new life for a life, or at least some hard coins from the tucked-in interstices of passing pockets to tinkle near the busker's feet. But Mervin is not a good busker. And not a natural showman. The guitar case as money-grab is a dead seal, its body ripped open and emptied of its entrails. And Mervin, true to the busker image, looks like shit with his weaselly beard, and skinny man's throat. His ears poking out by the tightness of a bobble hat are made to look like a joke set and his pick and mix clothes are at best refugee-chic. His battered roughed-up guitar is self consciously slung across the bone field of his chest - the strings as loose as his apparent bad luck, and are strummed inexpertly and his props amount to little more than a grimed up, empty tea cup. His breath smokes through the cold air. 

These are the things we know. We can see them. What we don't know is that he's needlesssly putting himself through this. He doesn't need to be on the streets. He's making some kind of point which makes sense only to him. But that's because only he knows why he's there.