On the first day, it was a man with a rather tired-looking accordian, squeezing out arpeggios under the arch near the bus station, where the acoustics were good.

A few days later, a trumpeter had joined him. Together they wheezed through the standards as commuters hurried past.

Nearly a week later, while the rain dripped across the archway entrance, the accordianist and the trumpet-player were accompanied by a dishevelled man hitting a plastic fishcrate with sticks. He wasn’t exactly in time, but then the rhythm lolloped and lurched about anyway, and it amused the people sheltering in the archway from the rain.

A few days afterwards, they’d acquired another trumpeter - a man with fast fingers and an ear for a jazz version.

A week later, in the darkness of a cold winter morning, the man with the plastic fishcrates was gone, replaced by a drummer with a djembe, tapping out urgent dancing rhythms while the trumpeters tooted a lively version of jingle bells, and the accordianist filled out the song with great heaving, huffing chords.

Commuters tapped their feet while they waited for their buses, dropped the odd shiny coin into an upturned hat as they passed by, and smiled.