Did the thing and didn't write it

I have the best bit I've had all month and I didn't do it. Three blokes in a close off the Cowgate, middle one wide as a wardrobe, shoved me into the brick and my elbow made a sound I am going to be hearing in my sleep for a week. I walked out laughing. Actually laughing. Texted her a skull from the cobbles. She came anyway, even though I said don't. And tonight I stood on the Pleasance stage at 7:30 and I ran the hour without any of it. Why. Because the laugh I did in the close was mine and I wanted to keep it. Because if I do the bit the laugh becomes the room's. Because the chest did the thing and the thing isn't for the room. I think I protected it. I think that is the first brave thing I've done in a year and I think it sounds wet when I write it down so I'm going to stop.

I skipped the Beehive. That's the bit that scares me more than any shove. Free drinks and four or five comics who might know my name and I went straight home to Marchmont and boiled the kettle and stood in the kitchen waiting for my elbow to swell. It hasn't. I think I used the Beehive as proof I was fine and tonight I didn't want to prove anything.

She didn't ask if I was okay. She just took my arm and walked me back. I think that's love. I think that's the version of it I get.

Soho thing still in my mouth. She's going to ask one day and I'll have to either tell her or make a joke out of it and I don't know which is worse. Probably the joke.

Mum Saturday. Topping twice, bus tour, the Witchery. None of it includes my 7:30 because my 7:30 is full of the shove I didn't do and the chest thing I won't say and a Manchester callback I was still tweaking at five in the afternoon because tweaking is what I do instead of feeling things. She'll ask how the shows are going and I'll say smashing because that's a word she understands and I hate that I know that.

Rank: hold.