Oliver's day

THEREFORE from Day 25's Jules endorsement, on Saturday Ollie worked the slow bookshop shift on Lamb's Conduit Street, and at two o'clock a man with a podcast microphone clipped to his jacket came to the counter and said I'm from Backstage Banter, can I get a quote about the panic attack set going to the BBC, and Ollie said no. The man photographed the no, the photo went up at four with the caption local comedian declines to comment and 2,400 likes in an hour, and the humiliation sat on him while he restocked poetry and a regular named Geoff with the Donegal scarf said quietly at the till, well done, son, the warm win sitting beside the bruise like a coin with two sides. At six, Rae texted — quiet, two lines, asking if he was alright — and he replied with a single 💀 and felt, for the first time in the month, the specific loneliness of being seen by people who had not been in the room. He walked home and decided, by the time he reached Tufnell Park, that the BBC could read the Backstage Banter post and he would still walk into Broadcasting House on Monday.