When he did eventually get out, he still owed us over £500, so Adrian sent the following text:
Adrian (8.31, 28 March):
Gerald. You haven’t written with payment plan nor repayment code so I have no option. You haven’t paid a penny since 21 February despite previous promises to pay weekly. You will liable for all costs and this could have been avoided. If you pay 50 today and every Monday until debt is cleared we will delay action.
Gerald (8.35, 28 March):
I can’t afford that amount weekly so i need balance then i will seek legal advice which I will get free due to low income.
Adrian (8.35, 28 March):
Balance given in letter dated 9 March, advising you to seek legal advice. 541.18 is due at moment.
Gerald (8.59, 28 March):
The amount i was paying you off debt was a lot less than fifty pounds per week i will offer you twenty pounds per week on tuesday’s that is max i can afford if not suitable then you have to do what you have to do, that’s my last word on subject; can’t give you what i have not got. But i still require a balance if this is acceptable i will organise for you to have one eighty bond as well. I think that’s a reasonable offer considering my financial situation. After bond it will be eighteen weeks at twent pounds. Yes or no.
Adrian (9.06, 28 March):
I accept, starting tomorrow. I will write to confirm.
So, Adrian spent a considerable amount of time some days, sending texts, reading daft replies and then sending further texts. It was interfering with him enjoying walking the dog, tapping away on his mobile as he tramped over fields. And then there were the hours spent preparing court papers and court appearances which more-or-less swallowed up whole days, because we couldn’t think of much else on a day when we had a court hearing.
When Gerald texted with the above repayment plan, I was gullible as usual, thinking he was likely to stick to the plan, because he wouldn’t want his financial affairs in the spotlight. I felt that, as a fellow business person, he might be more likely to pay his debts as he would be able to relate to the experience of being owed money and not receiving it. I was wrong and in the end, we got the £180 deposit, which he lost nothing by signing over to us, as he never could have got his own hands on it and he paid one instalment of £20.
We could have blackmailed him, by threatening to report him to the Inland Revenue, as it was clear he was living completely out of the system, paying no tax. We also considered getting a court judgement against him, followed by bailiff, but it was all so much negativity, that we just couldn’t handle it. In addition, we had a problem brewing with another tenant at the house.
When we finally got him out and advertised his room, we received a call from a woman and I put her off, more or less saying that, as a woman, you’d have to be a maniac to live with the kind of tenants we had there.