I was playing yesterday afternoon/evening in the local shopping centre with the orchestra I play with - playing Christmas tunes and more uptempo stuff. Owing to the way we were set up, I was out on the left wing and so open to the tender mercies of punters as they ran for shop to shop.
First was a lady with what looked like a mummified corpse in a wheelchair, but turned out to be her elderly chain smoking mother. “Do you have a drummer?” She asked. “Only, I play the drums.” “Yes,” I replied, gesturing to the actual drummer sat behind his kit, as well as the full section of percussionists. “Oh,” she said - “I can sing as well.” Rapidly changing tack (having realised her dreams of stardom were fading), she asked “what make of bass is that?”, and then answered herself, most unexpectedly - “ah, its a Warwick Streamer. Nice. I’ve got one of those.” She then took her mum off for a wheel, leaving me nonplussed.
Second was the little old lady who came up mid-tune, rapped her watch, and asked if we were going to be much longer?
Finally, an honourable mention to the chap who let his labrador off it’s lead to run into the orchestra as we were playing, nearly knocking me over, as “it just wanted to see what was going on...”