I am sometimes a very patient person. I have been very patient about this new house, and the saga of waiting for it. There has been an attempt at almost every step for something to go wrong, legally, logistically, people letting us down, it’s all happened.

But now we’re close to the end. We have been told we will be able to complete on the new house at the end of the month. As usual though, the date in question has had a long standing commitment in it for some time, to go and see my sister and the nephew for his 1st birthday. Unbelievable really, but actually pretty standard for me. I wait forever to have interesting things to do and then they all happen at the same time.

Thankfully we have been fairly busy and kept occupied. With so much going on there has been no time for me to worry. Or plan. J has done no planning, but he’s done a lot of worrying. He has led from the front on this new property shenanigan. I have done almost nothing except provide support and comment from the sidelines. My business is just too busy for me to stop during the week. So while I keep the fort, he does the phone calls, though he has to be pressed into action most of the time.

The other odd thing that happened this month is that J made friends with a customer, and they made unfriends. I could see from my position it was never going to end well. The customer was a decent enough guy, but realistically it was all a bit intense. He was a serious depressive, former drug addict, claiming to be over it now. I think he was, but the mental scars ran deep. He had absolutely no filter, saying things that were stupid and offensive (“Jeffrey Dahmer is just misunderstood”) … I tried to keep clear, but J was drawn deeper and deeper into Eastenders levels of drama.

It culminated one Sunday evening when the new “friend” said to J that he had broken up with his wife and was thinking of ending it all. J is no stranger to this level of emotional intensity, but the problem was that he was just seeking attention. J wanted to rush over. I said don’t do it, just phone him. We have no time to ourselves, and we’re about to head into a busy period with the new house. On a Sunday night, our last rest before the madness of the week, we can’t just go wasting it. He’s not worth it, and he’s manipulating you.

During the phone call it was then claimed that J had been siding with the soon to be ex-wife (nonsense) and that he was conspiring against him. Paranoid nonsense. And insulting. J had done his level best to be friendly, non-judgemental, caring, responding to messages all the time on his personal phone. Instead, he got that sort of thing back. He later confessed to me it wasn’t the first time.

I said all along during the whirlwind two weeks it was all seeming a bit intense. Hundreds, thousands of messages, back and forth, all the time. It can’t last. He will do something that pushes too far. This was it. It happened a bit quicker than I thought, but it’s over now.

It was a shame really. I said, we are too busy and our lives too stressful to have time to squeeze in a neuroatypical friend. Especially as J is a bit prone to this sort of thing anyway. He was trying to be kind to someone a bit like him. It has backfired somewhat. It was worth a try but I think there are probably more worthwhile individuals…

so we have reverted to normal. And just in time for things to go crazy next week…