Another day, Adrian complained to the tenants that they never put any money in the gas meter, which meant that the ground floor was going to suffer from damp. He also said to Simon and Jason:
‘Look. I’m sick of you continually making the communal areas filthy! Why can’t you pick up a cloth and do some cleaning?’
Because these grown men wouldn't lift a finger, Adrian would have to go up and blitz the house himself. He said to Simon he knew exactly why Simon would never even wash a cup:
‘You’re shitting yourself you might do something for someone else, aren’t you?’
Simon said: ‘Well I might be handing my notice in anyway. I’m applying for a £40,000 job 60 miles away. I'm pretty likely to get it.’
It never came to anything. Another time he was employed for a short time as a labourer by a Christian building company but was given the push for mysterious reasons. Even people trained in forgiveness and charity were willing to shove him out into the cold. Adrian knew why they would have got shot of him.
‘They must have got sick of the sound of his voice,' he opined.
As time went on his behaviour deteriorated further; he developed a routine of spending entire days, slobbing around in his room, pissing in a saucepan. He was obsessed with ‘gaming online.’
‘I’m now one of the top players in the world,’ he declared. ‘Please don’t try and get hold of me between the hours of 7 and 11 in the evenings, as I’m busy on the internet.’ Well, good, because we don’t want to talk to you anyway, mate.
He went to the police station because he reckoned someone in the street had damaged his car. The police asked for his documentation and the MOT had expired, so they told him he shouldn’t be using the car anyway and to take it off the road.
'Ah, you don't understand,' he explained to the officer. 'I don’t need an MOT because I know the car's roadworthy.' He then parked it on wasteland so that it wasn’t on a public highway, eventually scrapping it, because he couldn’t afford to get it fixed.
'Well, I'll never be able to find work without a car,' he said, giving up on ever looking for a job again. As far as he was concerned, people who could be bothered to get a job and pay their taxes could support him for the rest of his (able-bodied) life.
It reminded me of a man in his twenties who rang Adrian up, looking for a house to rent for himself, his partner and his sister.
'Who amongst you is working? Adrian asked, not unreasonably I thought.
'None of us,' the man replied.
'Well, what are the prospects of any of you getting a job soon?' was Adrian's follow-up question.
'None of us.'
As far as he was concerned, he was now permanently disabled, having damaged his hand by falling down some stairs after a night out.
‘Oh. You had too much to drink, did you?’ Adrian asked. In our society a person could injure themself through being drunk and then live forever more on the State, probably even getting extra benefits because of their disability.