30 March - Money & Friends

I could write this post w/o fail every month and I could have written it for the past few years. I try and remain zen about most of life because the first question I ask when any bad stuff happens to me specifically is: has anybody died? If the answer is 'no', then it follows that it can't be that bad. So on that, I am fine, don't panic and so on. But most people probably have different attitudes to anything in life and money for example.
A few years ago I lent a good friend a pot of cash. £40k. No, I didn't have it floating about but I borrowed it as a drawdown on my mortgage, as you do. He was going to repay me the amount owed every month on his portion of the loan and in the meantime the building society merrily deducts it from me every month. We did draw up a contracts at a solicitor. This is backed by a house he bought in the middle of nowhere suburb of ... Bristol. A couple of years later I lent him another £10k (same way) because he had to pay off a tax bill.
What could go wrong?
In all the time this has been going on, bar a flying pig kind of month, I have had to chase that FUCKING payment off him every month and most times it takes a month to see last month's due amount in my account by which point it's this month and this month's due and so on.

Of course very heated exchanges have taken place. I don't so much object to it all being late as much as I object to being told on a Friday that it will be there on Monday, only to chase it on Tuesday and then Wed and then Thur it's still not there and Friday, well maybe. You know, just tell me for sure you have funds and when I will get it because otherwise I've in turn made arrangements thinking it's going to be there and so on.

Of course I have said sell the fucking bloody house and give me my money back and be done with it, never mind that you live in it with your brood and would have to go rent, I don't CARE. But I together with most of the country had not reckoned with the recession and of course had he bought a flat in Kensington, he'd have no problem getting rid of it, but a pokey house in Bristol suburb is just never going to shift, not even knocking it down to below below below 2006 prices.

And so we are here. Every month. Of course you could say to me that I should live as if that money was never going to arrive every month and spare myself much churning but... I can't manage it. And as a consequence I have not managed to go visit his family for over a year, probably nearly 2. I just can't face it as am so resentful. The thought of 4 more years of this drip sends me spinning.
As I said, some people can't handle finding a mouse in their flat and go spare, I can't handle being owed money.