IN one hundred years' time what will people do to get a flavour of what life was like in Winchester in 2019?

Who knows exactly how the media will have developed by then but many people will want to look at something organised and tangible like a newspaper. The Chronicle will be an invaluable tool for many things such as council decisions, court cases, crime, deaths, accidents and such like.

But what will people do if they want to catch the atmosphere, the colour of what the city was like? They could do worse than consult Diary of a Busker: the First Hundred Days by Marvin B Naylor.

Known to thousands, Marvin has been performing in the High Street since 2011, somewhere between the Wellcome Gospel Hall and the Buttercross and thousands will know the beautiful tones of the theme from The Third Man, the classic noir thriller from 1949 starring Orson Welles or Here Comes the Sun, by the Beatles.

Luckily for the future social historian, Marvin has also been writing a daily diary of what happened to him and the people he has met. There are the good, the bad and the ugly; the friendly people, the not so friendly, the happy and the sad, the sane and the ...less sane. One Stephen Hawking-lookalike memorably tried to steal money from his collecting hat.

It's like a travelogue, except one where the protagonist does not move from his little camping seat but the whole world comes to him.

Marvin denies he is a writer but he has 25 notebooks at his Fulflood home packed with his daily offerings that would refute that. He certainly can write and his vignettes are a delight to read.

As well as the insight he gives into the people of this city the diaries are also a tribute to Marvin and his perseverance.

He took to busking after his deafness led to his sacking from the rock covers band in which he made his living. At the end of every entry Marvin puts the total he has collected - usually somewhere between £10 and £50. Little deters him although he says that it is impossible to play his precise style at under 6 degrees centigrade.

Skylight Press are to be congratulated on publishing the diaries and a second volume is already in preparation.

l Diary of a Busker: The First Hundred Days, is published by Skylight Press, price £13. It is available from P&G Wells bookshop on College Street and Amazon. If enough people go in and ask for it perhaps Waterstone's will stock it too.