the chest did the actual thing

The chest. The real one. Not the bit, not the anxiety I joke about on stage. The same one I had on the District line in March and told nobody — not Yara, not mum, not the group chat. The stag bloke didn't even look back. He shouted about the Frog and Bucket and kept walking with his lads and my notebook was in the guttering and I was standing against a courtyard wall with a face like I'd been told.

Manchester working-class kid, shoved by a Man City shirt. There is something in that I can't write down properly. He was on my side. Literally on my side. And he shoved me because his missus didn't laugh. I have done this maths before. In pubs in Stretford when my dad came home wrong. I am not putting that on the page either.

The Scotsman freelancer has been talking. Frog and Bucket, Manchester, the whole origin story, passed round the Pleasance courtyard like a tip. I am being recognised by drunk men in football shirts who know where I came from before I told them. There is a flattered thing and there is a sick thing and they are the same thing and I sat in a pub for two hours staring at a pint and couldn't separate them.

Holborn's didn't sell out. Mine did. I am aware of what that makes me. I am aware his notebook was open in the fifth row and mine is in a drain.

Mum. I haven't called. I will not tell her about the shove. She'll hear it in my voice and the mum thing will break me open and I cannot afford to be broken open in a Marchmont flat on a Saturday night because I have a 6pm tomorrow and I need to score it first.

Yara is on the new version running in my head and I will not put a wall into that version. The version is new and clean. I will let it be that for one more night.

The matinee was six and a half. The hen do at the back laughed late but they laughed. I survived an hour. Surviving is a kind of laugh and I'm taking it.

Still ranking rooms. Still flinching. Still going.