Do you think I should be ashamed of what I did?
Do you think I should be ashamed of what I did?
The following story is probably one I should not be too proud of, but sometimes you are pushed too far.
When my father closed his business and retired, he bought a house in Southbourne, Bournemouth, opposite his younger sister, the Aunt I had lived with for a few years after my mother died.
The house he purchased was ideal as it was converted into two flats. The upper one a three bedroom one, the lower flat had two bedrooms.
The plan was dad would live in the ground-floor flat and let out the top floor to supplement his pension. Some suitable (we thought) tenants were found, a retired army man and his wife.
A tenancy agreement was signed, and the rent agreed at £15 per week. (It was the 1970s.)
No sooner had the rent agreement been signed, the couple went to the local council and complained about the rent. The Labour controlled council sent a box ticker down, and he declared the tenancy agreement null and void, and fixed the rent at £6 per week.
When my dad pointed out that his sister rented a beach hut from the council, which was basically a shed with no electricity, water or gas, and you were not allowed to sleep in it overnight.
The rent the council charged my aunt: £6 per week. There was little we could legally do about it.
My father grew up in the Hoxton area of East London, as I did. When my dad grew up it was said policeman would only patrol the streets in three’s. It wasn’t quite as bad when I grew up, but it was still a tough area.
After he left London, my father occasionally went back and stayed with my sister who, had returned from America and now lived in the City of London. During these visits, he would call on some of his old friends.
Now, some of my dad’s friends were what we call ‘Useful to know’. They were people you did not want to cross. When he told them of the problem, he was having with his tenants, some of them offered to ‘help’ solve the problem. My dad reluctantly, but sensibly, declined.
But I was not prepared to roll over.
Now my dad was a demon for electrical gadgets and was also going deaf. This worried me, my brother and sister, as he often he could never hear the phone when he was outside. This left us concerned about him.
A solution was found. Dad fixed an alarm bell on an outside wall that was attached to his phone and would ring very loudly.
The phone was attached just above his bedroom, and just below the main upstairs bedroom, where the tenants slept.
I saw a solution to the other problem.
I told my dad to go and stay with my sister in London for a weekend, arriving Friday night and staying over until Wednesday.
By now, I had moved to Hertfordshire and had a phone.
I started ringing his number and made sure it kept ringing until 3am. The receiver was locked in my dad’s flat, so the phone could not be disconnected.
The bell was ringing under his tenant’s bedroom window.
And I made sure it kept ringing for most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday night.
The tenants handed their notice in two weeks later.
My dad reverted to holiday let’s for the flat. People were prepared to pay £30 per week.
Was it a nice thing to do?
I will let you decide, but I wasn’t prepared to see my dad screwed out of his pension pot.
They say you can take the boy out of the East End, but you can’t take the East End out of the boy.
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