28 January 2026

Alas, the bailiffs are at my door again

The pimple on the bum of humanity in front of me was waving a piece of paper with a lot of red ink on it

Photo by Robert Norbury/Millennium Images

Bzzzt! A ring on the doorbell; 4.45pm on a Wednesday. Who could it be? I am not expecting a parcel, but maybe someone else is, and because I am a loving and giving person, I bound downstairs so I can be helpful.

However, when I open the door I don’t see a postie or similar: I look into the eyes of an assassin, a Terminator. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop – ever. Until you are dead. In other words: a bailiff. My, how the years rolled back.

Many young people starting out in life ask me the best way to meet, and then deal with, a bailiff. Well, the meeting is the easy bit. All you have to do is forget to pay your council tax. If you are remotely grown up, you may find this hard; paying bills might come naturally to you. Maybe you’ve already set up a direct debit. In which case, there is little hope for you: you will almost certainly never get to meet one of these exquisite creatures in the wild, unless you pass them on the stairs as they go clumping up them in order to pound on the door of your useless neighbour.

Anyway, I had completely lost my technique, it has been so long since I have had to deal with one face-to-face. The last one of my acquaintance, whom I nicknamed Mr Chuckles, would call me up every month and ask me to read out the long card number, etc, and squeeze £200 from my bank account. The last time I saw one in the flesh was years ago. He was standing outside the original Hovel in Marylebone and ringing the bell (also around 4.45pm). As bitter experience had already taught me, they came equipped with photographs so you couldn’t say “sorry, Mr Lezard hasn’t been here for weeks/he’s dead”, etc. I ducked down a side street and sat out the next hour in a pub: the Barley Mow off Baker Street, which also contains its original snugs for extra protection from the police.

This time, I had forgotten all my training. The pimple on the bum of humanity in front of me, whose name I failed to catch, was waving a piece of paper at me with a lot of red ink on it. I saw that he had many others in his folder. Good God, what is happening to this country. He told me that I had to pay the thick end of two grand NOW or he and presumably some mates would come round the next morning at six to take goods to the value of. “And at that time in the morning, you know, with neighbours, it could be pretty embarrassing.”

Embarrassing? It already was. For my neighbours in the ground floor flat had just come back from a Big Shop, and were going back and forth, laden with their spoils from the car boot, while I called my brother and desperately begged him to lend me the money.

I also wondered what they could take from the Hove-l that might help them in their quest. I suppose they could get £50 for my laptop, which is a Lenovo, but a third of the keys decided to stop working a few months ago and I’ve been plugging in a cheap and rackety external keyboard ever since. It can’t have a good resale value. The only other things they could make any money at all off of are the books. But even if you could get a quid each for them, that would be £780 maximum, assuming books have been flowing into the Hove-l at a rate of three a week over five years. The thought of a bunch of soulless mercenaries removing all these books and thereby freeing up an awful lot of space gave me a certain sober joy, but I am fond of many of these books and do not want to see them go.

Luckily, my brother was able to help although things will be a little frosty for a while. But hey, he knew the risks when he became my little brother. How he must laugh whenever he sees another study proving how older brothers are sensible and younger brothers are happy-go-lucky scamps.

I was in a hurry, though: I had to meet B—, J— and their new American friend, Joey, whom they had met at Gatwick during the routine rail chaos on the Brighton route (see last week’s column). I met B— outside the entrance to the council offices, for that is where his wife, J—, works. Brighton and Hove City Council’s offices were pretty much the last place on Earth I wanted to be standing in the cold, and explained why.

“Don’t tell J—,” I said.

“Too right,” he replied. “She’ll give you the bollocking of a lifetime.”

However, later in the pub, mellowed by the Prince Albert’s porter and a convivial atmosphere,I did tell J—, for this was a department she once worked in. She listened thoughtfully as I detailed the Terminator’s threats.

“I don’t think they’re allowed to do that,” she said. Around the table, the others talked to Joey (a most splendid and delightful woman) about the situation in America, with thugs going around the streets and dragging innocent people off to jail or worse.

Tell me about it, I thought. We’re not there yet, but we’re on our way…

[Further reading: The Online Safety Act came for my short story]