Oliver's day

Saturday matinee, full house, hen do at the back, stag do at the front, a Scotsman freelancer in the fourth row, James Holborn in the fifth with a notebook — the hour recalibrates every forty seconds and survives. In the Pleasance courtyard afterwards, walking toward the beer garden, a stag-do guy in a Man City shirt shoves him hard in the shoulder — "oi, Manchester, funny lad, my missus didn't laugh" — and Ollie's arm goes back into the wall and his notebook falls into the guttering. Emotional spike: the chest does the real thing, not the bit, and his face goes white in front of a circle of strangers. Recognition: the stag guy shouts "Frog and Bucket, innit" because the Scotsman freelancer has apparently been talking. Decision: he will not tell mum, will not tell Yara, will not write the shove into a bit.