Steve the builder, who was fitting his new bathroom, arrived at 6.00 am.

Chris could hear him shuffling round on the pavement outside desperate to knock his door before the reluctantly agreed 7pm arrival time. He dragged himself out of bed and into some clothes.

“Chris I got to tell you that that wotsit won’t work. She don’t fit on the other wotsit and he won’t like being down there with this blocking everything”, blurted Steve without saying hello.

Chris had no idea what he was talking about.

“So’s I’ll have to go to b and q and get her another one.“

He whistled, puffed his his E cigarette and looked at the floor.

“That’s fine mate, just tell me what I owe you” said Chris.

While the house was full of drilling, Chris went to an artisan bakers to research his case. He had been a “creative business outreach manager” for a theatre company since failing as an actor and had managed to reduce the actual time he spent working down to about 10 hours a week made up mostly of Zoom meetings.

All had been fine until this year’s funding cuts. Then the trustees stated that his role would combined with the role of the retiring office manager a labour intensive role that required day-to-day visibilty. Now he was looking at getting an ADHD diagnosis to prove he was unsuitable for the tasks within his new Job Description. He had looked carefully at his conditions of employment and had worked out that with a diagnosis they couldn’t force him out without a hefty compensation package.

He’d done a test on insta which proved he had it because he was always late for work and often felt anxious, other people didn’t seem to have his problems.

He was interrupted by a cough .“Only the thing is my Mrs has just died see!” said Steve the builder who seemed to have overcome the irrational fear of artisanal dough, Chris relied on to avoid him.

“I’m gonna have to go home before I fits this.” He said waving a piece of metal tube in Chris’s face. “She won’t fit in the regular place I put her, so I’ll have redo the bracket , don’t worry I’ll squash her in somehow.“ Chris didn’t know if he was talking about his wife or the tubing.

As Steve drove home he thought about the Mrs. Since they were childhood sweethearts she’d had his fights in the playground, his expulsion, his time in the remand centre and his gambling addiction to put up with before she’d helped him get started as a builder. After this he was on the straight and narrow but still “mad as a box of frogs” as she said. His insomnia and obsessions included collecting extractor fans, and yoga which he’d taken up to calm himself down. (He took a mat to all his jobs and was often found in the downward dog position in the unplumbed bathrooms of North Cardiff.)

She’d tried to make him get diagnosed for his obvious ADHD. But he’d always shrugged it off. “Why do I need I sign to say I’m crazy “ he asked her tenderly “We’ve both known that for years”.

He pulled up on the pavement and parked near a sign saying “keep clear, access needed!”.

There he cried like a leaking shower for the love of his life.

Chris had had a satisfactory morning, he’d arranged meetings with a private clinic, his manager and his trade union. If he executed this carefully this diagnosis might help him pay off his mortgage and retire early.

And then he remembered himself and that he had been so caught in his own problems that he failed to empathise with Steve the builder, whose wife had just died. He wasn’t unempathetic but too often he couldn’t shake off his own problems long enough to listen to others. And at that moment he realised that his desire for diagnosis might be about more than just getting out of work.