Tuesday, before Pryce

The panic attack page landed. I said the words out loud in the back room of a pub near Old Street and the room didn't go polite. Someone near the back said fuck under their breath and I think that might be the best review I've ever had. I know what polite sounds like now — it's tissue paper, it's the Monday room — and this wasn't that.

I'm terrified. If this is what works I can't keep doing the Radox bit, and the Radox bit is the bit that paid for the Northern line. I'm a working-class kid from Manchester who learned to make people laugh so he didn't have to feel anything, and now I've gone and felt something on stage in front of strangers and they clapped for it and I don't have a comeback for that. I just stood there like a man who'd been told the rules changed overnight.

Imogen from Soho Theatre introduced herself at the bar. Soho Theatre. I shook her hand with my clammy paw and said the lineup was strong and she said send a tape. I said I would. I will, after I've thrown up, but I will.

Yara's text lit up my phone three words later and I've read it four times walking up through Islington. My face is doing something. She's the only person who makes me forget to rank the room, which is either the best thing about her or the reason I'll lose her.

The bus ticket from Rae is in my other pocket. I haven't texted. I don't know what I'd say. Thanks for the bus ticket, are all the Sally Rooney girls this kind to comedians who died the night before?