Sad news. Uncle Haji has died.

Through the vagaries of fate, I hadn’t heard of him before which is a pity as he would have shined as my hero in a world obsessed with health, fitness and hygiene.

Uncle Haji was scared of washing and swore it would kill him. Rather cruelly, people nagged him and rather unkindly dubbed him as “the world’s dirtiest man”. Why couldn’t they leave him alone to live his life quietly in his hole in the ground and the little shelter that some kind person built for him?

He harmed no one. He lived on a diet of rotten meat and unsanitary water drunk from an old oil can with the occasional treat of porcupine. I’m quite sure he hadn’t heard all the nagging about health and fitness, in spite of the hassle from his neighbours.

In the end they killed him. I’m sure they didn’t mean to but they finally washed all the soot and pus off him, and true to his belief he died shortly after.

And as a little footnote, he was a smoker. Yes, he was fond of the cigarettes and on at least one occasion puffed on more than one cigarette at once.

He was 94 years old.

He can’t have heard all the rhetoric about smoking being a killer?