Bradford's "Jesus Man", RIP.

From The Daily Mail:

For more than 50 years the ‘Jesus Man’ of Bradford walked the streets spreading good cheer wherever he went with a wave and a warm smile. Geoffrey Brindley cut a distinctive figure dressed in his familiar brown robe and sandals with a satchel around his neck.

No one really knew where he was walking to or what he was doing, but this Christian figure somehow brought joy to people’s lives by his friendly demeanour. A ‘gentle and spiritual man,’ he simply brightened the day by smiling at strangers as he passed by...

It's true! When I was a lad, we saw him a couple of times out of the car window on the way home from the shops, and even from that distance, you felt he had given you all a smile and a wave. My Dad claimed that the man had been walking around since time immemorial (which wasn't quite true, the man was only ten or fifteen years into his journey by then) and pondered whether he was The Actual Wandering Monk.

My Dad also said that once when it was really chucking it down, he had pulled up and offered the man a lift, but the man just said that didn't need a lift where he was going.

I always wondered whether I had somehow imagined all this (a bit like small children believing in Santa Claus) and/or that my Dad had embellished one or two chance incidents into an urban myth. Turns out it was true.