Landlord Blues: Renting out the house from hell

At this time, I was trying to keep a record of these experiences as a landlord, hoping that this might turn into a book at some point. But a big problem with writing about these experiences as a landlord was that focusing on them could get me down. Sometimes it was cathartic, but it didn’t feel right to focus on all this negative emotion when I was in a good mood. I also felt guilty if I was sitting in comfort recording what was going on whilst Adrian was busy actually sorting it all out. I also sensed the feeling from Adrian that what I was doing wasn’t work and wasn’t going to bring any money in.
One particular morning, following Nigel’s departure, I was drinking my coffee in Costa Coffee, whilst Adrian was foregoing his; instead,he was cleaning up the rancid room left by Nigel and the stinking communal areas for which they were all responsible. He had taken up Sheila, a local woman who did some cleaning for us now and again. They had their rubber gloves, but could have done with nose pincers as well, with stinky Simon still there at this point. 
Gerald, the market trader (whose tenancy, in all its ignominy is described soon) had said he’d fish around for us regarding where Nigel’s alleged girlfriend was living in a nearby town, because that was the most likely place where he’d move (another time, Gerald had laughed when we mentioned his ‘girlfriend:’ saying, 'I think you'll find he's not that way inclined.' Their lives were a mystery to us; we only caught a glimpse of the chaos of their worlds). We were hoping to find out his forwarding address in case we pursued legal action against him for the arrears. 
So we popped to see Gerald on his market stall, paying £10 for an £8.99 t-shirt off him – that we didn’t need, to give him some custom; he was then immediately willing to rat on his ‘friend’. He’d gone off him now, thinking of him as dirty and messy, and to be fair Gerald was out every day working on his stall, whilst Simon and Nigel lazed around all day.  It also transpired that Nigel owed the others a few quid; other people were always frantic and furious when money was owed to them. Gerald told us what Nigel had been saying.
'He's mega pissed off that you keep asking for the arrears. He says it's really annoying.' 
At least Nigel would answer the 'phone from time to time though, which was very unusual for a tenant in arrears. It was far more common for tenants to be too scared (or ashamed?) to answer the 'phone. 
The week after Nigel had got out, I rang him.
‘It's great you've moved out,’ I said. ‘Now, what about all the money you owe us?’ 
‘I’ll pay it when I can.’ 
‘And when will that be?’ 
‘In a week or two.’ 
‘When exactly?’ 
‘Mid-February.’ 
‘Right, the 14th of February,’ I said, trying to tie him down to a specific date.  He chuckled then:
‘Oh, Valentine’s Day, I won’t forget that.’ A few weeks previously he'd finished a ‘phone call I’d made to him with ‘ciao’... like we were friends having a social chat, instead of him being one of the causes of the horrid kernels of stress I could feel in the pit of my stomach, which might lead to all manner of health problems later on. 
But the main thing was that he was out. And we’d also been given a £1,800 tax credit payment that week, after updating the HMRC with our abysmal annual income, so it wasn’t all bad.