'I can't pay the rent because I've been donating a lot of money to good causes.'
Saturday, May 31, 2014 @ 3:40 PM
To cut a long story short, because even I'm even sick of talking about it now, I'll sum up the last stage of our association with Okie.
Around this time, he stopped paying the rent entirely.
Adrian: 'What's going on? Why aren't you paying?'
Okie: 'I've been making a lot of donations to charity with the Church. And it's left me with a cash-flow problem.'
('I don't believe that for a minute,' Adrian says to me. 'He's a selfish liar.')
Adrian: 'I suggest before you make donations to good causes, you pay the rent.'
A week later, Adrian texts:
'Where's the rent?'
The answer: 'Cash-flow problems.'
At the same time, Alan our painter is decorating at the house and reports back:
'He's not working. He's not leaving the house.'
So Adrian confronts him, saying he knows he isn't working.
'No, I am working, just doing different shifts,' he claims.
'I don't believe you,' Adrian insists. 'You've got a problem. Tell me what's happening.'
'They've done an audit in work of the personnel files and found out my visa has expired so they've dismissed me.'
'You have to leave then,' Adrian says. 'Release the bond to cover the unpaid rent and make sure you're gone by the end of the month. Where can you go?
'I've got a cousin in London where I was planning to go anyway.'
Adrian then went around before he was due to leave and found that he had made no effort to tidy the room or sort out the kitchen, which he had promised to do. As he told me later:
'His room and the kitchen were filthy stinking.'
'It's a disgrace,' he says to Okie, adding, 'You've let me down again.'
Finally he left, with the house in a state and him owing £80.
It wasn't the last we heard of him, though, as a few weeks later he 'phoned Adrian and told him some story about a letting agents in London needing a reference from us.
'You won't get it until you've paid us that £80,' Adrian said.
'Adrian, I promise I will send you the money, only I need the reference straight away.'
'And you won't get it,' Adrian replied.
At the time, Adrian was in Andalucia, sorting out our holiday home rental and every five minutes Okie was ringing back trying to insist Adrian 'phone some woman and give her the verbal reference. In the end, he said: 'Stop ringing! I'm busy.'
'I've transferred £40,' he then said to me a few hours later, as Adrian asked me to field the calls.
'Transfer the other £40 and you can have the reference,' I said (in fact it was to do with his visa application - the Christian was lying again).
Finally he paid (only because he needed something off us!).
We had got rid of the last of our tenants from hell from our house from hell. A new chapter could now begin.