Just to give his name is complicated. He was born Kelvin Richard Burch, but that name disappeared many moons ago. Most common now is Redman - Rodmanden in Danish - because of his love of red clothing. (Some days he's in red from top to toe, including red plastic sun visor, and others all that remains are his maroon/tan Levi's shoes.) Deva Pragyan, a name given to him by an Indian mystic, now his legal name and on his ID. Jaffa is a nickname from the days when he wore only colours of the rising sun and one of the more bizarre is Clockwork Orange, because you shouldn't try and wind him up! In a letter to his son Majid, he said 'I now look pretty much like I did in 1981 - no make that 1978 - shoulder length hair and John Lennon glasses.' He's also rather handsome for his 42 years. His short but unkempt beard hides a boyish face and a wide ready smile, and his chocolatey eyes twinkle clearly through those fat lensed glasses. Slim in stature, and not a tall man, he's more comforting than imposing, and his infectious laughter is just one sign of his perpetual cheerfulness and optimism. Sadly, this winter he broke up with his girlfriend (whom he married in a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony, carried out by a British gypsy freak!). He then began drinking seriously, and when I saw him he was injured after a drunken fight with friends, the details of which he couldn't even remember. He dismissed it with an old classic of his - 'With enemies like mine, who needs friends?' - but that fight, and the news of an imminent visit from his daughter, helped him stop drinking. After three months without a beer, he's justifiably proud of his ex-alcoholic status. By birth he's an Englishman - an Old Suffolkian - but after all his rovings he's finally settled down in the controversial community of Christiania in Kobenhaven, Denmark and refers to himself as a Christianianite. He's homeless, and owns little more than what he stands up in, yet lives happily. He sleeps among the roof beams of the bath-house woodshed there, on a foam mattress with spotlessly clean real sheet, quilt, cover, pillow and pillowcase, and wakes with the dawn. He says, 'When I wake my only clock is the light so I'm often about early - I need a piss and a cup of tea - and it's impossible to think of going back to bed so I find myself there at the bakery in the middle of a mess - what else to do but clean up?'. After cleaning and sweeping the whole of Dealer Street, he's well rewarded. With money, food or best of all, in his words, 'stuff so good I lost half of it and couldn't remember how - payment from a dealer, the stuff he smokes and doesn't sell!'. All day he's available about the street, looking after the coffee and soda house, setting up an caring for the pipe stall, juggling oranges and generally being an extra hand for whoever needs him - always enjoying himself and getting stoned along the way. This describes my father, an unconventional man living an unconventional life, love him or hate him - it's impossible to ignore him. For an old hippy who's been on the brink of death more times than I care to count, who doctors were convinced would never reach forty, he's doing damn well. (written by Majida in 1989)