A friend offers his help

When I spoke of my messy inheritance
my friend offered his help
which I gladly accepted.
And I did the planning, booking two rooms and
- most of all -
didn't ask anyone else, 
until, 
in the nick of time,
he told me, by the way,
that I couldn't demand 
that much work for no payment,
that I should have known that and,
after all,
I was inheriting, wasn't I?
And when I then most unpleasantly felt
forced to remind him 
of the lengthy favours I'd previously done him,
I found
that he'd hardly noticed 
any of those.

2008-12-06