The torch and the receipt

She saw me. That is the part I keep turning over. Not looked at — saw. I was walking along Caledonian Road at half eleven, footsteps behind me, and a woman with a keyring torch slowed down and asked if I needed help. Not if I was lost. If I needed help. There is a difference and I felt all of it. I was not in trouble. I was just alone on an empty street looking like someone who might be.

I laughed it off. Obviously. But the way she fell into step beside me, just natural, like it was obvious — that is the bit I cannot put down. Someone looked at me and decided I was the kind of person who might need protecting. From what? From being a man walking alone? From being me at half eleven on a Sunday with nowhere urgent to be?

I got home and wrote the 256-bus-Oyster line on a Tesco receipt before my tea went cold. It is a good line. Clean. No hands shaking when I wrote it, which is the real test. The receipt is the only thing that survived the walk — I tucked it inside the front cover of the Moleskine next to the woman from Highgate, the one who laughed so hard her whole body moved. I am still thinking about that laugh. I think I am going to be thinking about it for a while.

The open mic was fine. Polite. Six minutes, a pint, a booker who took my card. I did not die. I did not fly. I am building a very long list of things that were fine.

Nobody asked if I was okay after.