My current flatmate, Amy, is moving out. Tomorrow she arrives aboard a white steed (or transit), packs up her belongings and heads for the green and pleasant land of Clapham to live in snuggly luxury with her rich South African boyfriend (quite why she didn't wish to remain in Streatham, proud owner of the hotly-contested Latest Fatal Shooting in London This Year title, with her perpetually skint flatmate is a mystery to me, but there you go).

But there appears to be a problem. And while I can gleefully report that, for once, it's not a problem that I have to solve, a problem it is nonetheless. It pertains to the Landlord (may his offspring sell him to a glue factory), whose perpetual unhelpfulness and astonishing ability to resemble a brick wall whenever we need anything done, was a trait of his we'd kind of grown accustomed to. A letter I wrote to him well over a month ago, detailing some matters that needed his urgent attention has gone gleefully unheeded and, as a result:

- The second toilet makes a deafening groan, akin to the final moments of the Titanic, when flushed

- The loft is not insulated, despite there being a brand new, utouched roll of insulation up there and, as a result, our heating bills this winter will therefore be, pardon the pun, through the roof

- There are wasps living, breeding, and setting up their own little wasp colony DIRECTLY OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW

And despite this, the Landlord (may his crotch be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels and may his arms be too short to scratch) has the temerity to send a letter to me - not to Amy and I - to ME, complaining that the gas and electicity meter readers have been complaining to him that they can't get into the property to read the meters because, whenever they knock on our door, nobody is home. Which begs the question - when exactly are they coming round? My guess would be, during the day. And just where do you suppose Amy and I might be during the day, oh great, wise, and revered Landlord? Oh yeah - at work! So we can pay you the rent so we do not end up on the street!

Included with the letter was a request that I take the reading myself, and send it back to him. It rather escapes me as to why I should be the one to do this, especially when the Landlord (may he be stung to death by a swarm of wasps) could do it himself one of of the many occasions he lets himself in to empty the coin meters in our kitchen. Which, by the way, he's not even legally supposed to DO without giving us notice.

But we'd kind of come to accept that this was just his way of operating and, if we wanted anything done, to do it ourselves. He was crap, that was fine. He didn't care about maintaining the property - that's fine. It'll be his earnings down the toilet when the building is condemned in about 10 years. All fine. Fine, fine fine.

But now he's taking a different tack and decided that maybe downright fleecing us might be fun.

He's informed Amy that she hasn't paid her last month's rent. She has. It's paid by standing order. The standing order went out of her account, into his. Yet he demurs! He says he hasn't had it, and he's demanding a cheque from her. What, in the immortal words of Aristotle, the f***!?!

She's now forced to send him her bank statement, which is never really a document you want to be floating out there in the ether, let alone in the mitts of the Landlord (may, etc...). Coupled with the fact that her boyfriend's house was burgled this week, and she has lost her treasured laptop, you might argue that she doesn't particularly need this right now.

Henceforth, as much as they make for depressing reading, I am keeping each and every one of my bank statements, lest he try to pull this treachery with me. He wants bank statements? He can have 'em. While I'm at it, maybe I'll slip into the envelope a few of the dried-up husks of dead wasp corpses that I keep finding on my bedroom floor.

May he be proudly surveying our house in ten years time when it collapses around his ears, and may he be trapped in the downstairs cupboard, taking a meter reading at the time.