Then he returned to the beginning of the first version of ‘All Along The Watchtower’. One day, he always told himself, he might even learn the whole song. It didn’t seem to matter that he didn’t, so he didn’t know if he ever would. No one noticed he was just singing the first verse and chorus over and over. Most of the time, they didn’t hang around long enough. People going in and out of the terminal were only within earshot for about forty seconds. He could get away with playing the same thing over and over and indeed had done just that for so long he could play this song fragment better than he could play anything else. He didn’t need to look at the strings. His fingers would their way almost by instinct; they knew where to go by themselves.

This didn’t bore Andy any more. He’d got it down to such a fine art that he could strum and sing without thinking about it. His mind could wander, like it was now.

Andy tried to lock eyes with those who passed. It wasn’t just to make it seem like he was playing only to them and incite them to drop some money in his cap. In the twenty odd seconds they were in Andy’s peripheral vision, he formed thorough perceptions of people. He knew when someone was responding to his Dylan, even if they weren’t going to put any money down. He could tell the difference between someone who was listening but pretending they couldn’t hear, and someone who was ably ignoring him. If they’d heard the song before, they couldn’t ignore him. The song was one that couldn’t pass you by if you were at all familiar with it. It hooked you in and made you listen. That was one of the reasons chose it, regardless of being the best song ever written, in Andy’s opinion.

Occasionally Andy got it wrong and someone unexpected tossed some change his way. You had middle aged men with stiff upper lips (acquired through fellating senior management rather than a distinguished military career, Andy thought) going into the airport in pristine, pressed Saville Row-type suits with nothing but a briefcase. They never gave money, always heard Andy, but always ignored him. But then sometimes, when they were on their own, they would walk past him and drop some pennies, almost covertly. It was usually the young people, those too young to have been hippies, who were most generous. But whenever someone older did the dipping and dropping routine, Andy imagined their past, saw the Dylan fan still dormant, captive inside that suit, but not really needing much incentive to break out.

The absolute worst type of people Andy had to put up with were those carrying guitars amongst their luggage. It was okay if they were girls, but if they were guys, and they usually were, then money was the last thing he got from them. A scowl, an evil glare, those were commonplace. It’s like they thought he was competition, even if they were travellers, not buskers. These people weren’t afraid to make eye contact. It was Andy who often found himself looking elsewhere. Once a guy with a fat face and an actual guitar case (not a bag, a proper case) stopped in front of him. He said something about the Hendrix version being better, or harder to play, or being better because it was harder to play, or something like that, as if he expected Andy to break in the song and debate it with him. Instead Andy ignored him and the fat-faced guy sauntered off smirking like he’d just defeated Hitler.

Another girl dropped some money in the cap.

“Cheers,” said Andy between lyrics.

NOTES:
This rather developed (well, more than usual) inner monologue was another deliberate attempt at a different style, largely because, at the end of the day, Andy is just another conduit character. There's another character called Andy who gets his hands on the coin before it leaves Glasgow, though mainly because there's the largest vignette of the entire story coming up soon, and by the time I got to the other side of it, I'd forgotten I'd already used the name.