He was a person who felt things with an intensity most people will never understand. In the weeks before he disappeared, I often saw him out in the streets of Oldham town centre, wandering around, muttering to himself, asking people for little favours like directions and odd questions. They thought he was homeless, which he was at that point, and either drunk, high, or mentally ill. I don’t think he was any of those things. I think he felt something coming that the rest of us couldn’t.
Which is why he wouldn’t let me help him. ‘There’s nothing you can do for me,’ he would say. ‘Nothing that matters.’
I thought he was depressed at first. Manic perhaps. He got himself arrested a few times for disrupting the peace or antisocial behaviour. But he never hurt anyone. He was, in his mind, trying to warn people, and growing desperate and frustrated when they wouldn’t listen. To him, what was going to happen was clear as day. He just wanted to help. But people avoided him like you would a stray dog.
The last time I saw him he was kneeling before the church on the crossroads, his head lent on the door. It was about six o’clock. I couldn’t get much out of him. He simply kept asking a question - addressed to who, I don’t know, it certainly wasn’t me - he kept asking ‘Why them?’
Paddy Dobson
9th March 2022