Remembering Harry Horrobin
Many years ago I wrote an article about my father’s great friend, one Harry Horrobin, who was a well known figure with his wife Betty living in the village where Iu reside now. The article was published in The Guardian and recently someone sent me a cutting… He are the words I wrote, taken from a very old file of mine filled with old bit of copy paper…
HARRY HORROBIN is a retired blacksmith who can’t resist a symbolic cut when he’s out snowballing. Once it’s done, he gives himself up to the police. Or sometimes he has to drive all the way to the police station to admit to his crime. The officers, alas, are seldom interested.
“Last time we went into the nearest town to give ourselves up, but the local constabulary didn’t want to know,” says Harry. “They telephoned the military police who got quite flustered when we insisted on being arrested. They just took our names and addresses and told us not to do it again.” Mr. Horrobin’s enthusiasm to be put both sides of the law is something of an example among the raggle-taggle protestants of the West Country. When Mr. Horrobin says he goes snowballing, he’s not referring to a nice old Hillman Hunter or a toboggan. Lots of other people have been snowballing too — reaching some dreadful military installation, they inform the powers that be that they’re going to do something illegal.
Mr. Horrobin, as befits a retired blacksmith, steps forth from the crowd with wire cutters akimbo in his burly hands. Snip, and the wire is broken. Inside, military personnel watch while these civilised, courteous, bearded old warriors go bonk into the night.
Then our hero gets back into his old Hillman Hunter and drives to the nearest police station. The missile, or whatever it was, still points at millions of innocent women and children. The police, or whoever they are, really don't want to make fuss because Mr. Horrobin is 75 years old, his charming wife Betty clutches at his sandwiches and old fashioned anorak. She is 70. “What shall we do with these two old newspapers? Will we lock them up and see what the Guardian down here in no time?”
So Mr. Horrobin drives home in his sedate manner, and writes a report for the local peace group. Then, after a cup of tea and a nap, he climbs the tiny staircase to his ancient workshop to study the back of an as-yet unused violin. And here, in the gloom of the evening, with the quietly grumbling voice of a Harrier Jump Jet taking off at rabbit’s ears as it hops to the escarpment, Mr. Horrobin ponders upon a world so keen on violence, yet so in love with music.
Even Harry’s own two hands are guilty of the hypocrisy. When their owner was an armourer in the RAF, he certainly did their best for the machines of war. But that was a long time ago and nowadays the Horrobin hands devote themselves to making and playing violins.
“2,000 years ago we were exhorted to turn our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks,” he says. “As an armourer and blacksmith I know that this is possible. I not only know how it can be done, but I have done it myself.”
“During the last two world wars we set up tons of gates and railings to make armaments, but now we have the reverse. Now we have weapons that can never be turned into ploughshares and pruning hooks because they are radioactive forever.”
Thoughts like these undoubtedly swim through the slow-but-sure villager once he’s stopped snowballing for the day. All very well to sit about finding new violations and generally enjoying ancient ceremonies, but it all comes up against a sad truth.
“Up an old Devon valley that morning went a charming estate hunt with beagles and hounds, sniffing after a tiny rabbit which had been disturbed by the anti-nuclear men,” says his wife Betty. “And when we got back I found that my husband had turned into a fully fledged campaigner and that he was starting a village peace group. Still, he was always going on about something, and I was glad to see him doing something about it.”
Since then the Horrobins have marched on tirelessly. The most odd place they have marched through is the check-in at Bournemouth. Mr. Horrobin has also been buried up to his knees in mud at the Glastonbury music festival in order to sell his hand-made badges for the ex-Services CND selling his own home-made peace and alternative paraphernalia.
Other ageing septuagenarians find the energy for a trip to London, maybe go to Covent Garden, perhaps, with the day’s shopping in mind. The Horrobins can be sure that they will be spending the night before camped outside some secret fence in the middle of the Wiltshire countryside, up to their ankles in mud, wood, or even snow.
Harry gets through several sets of small, hard shoes each year as his feet plod around the country lanes with badges and more badges. One local paper has this to say about his workshop: “This ancient room is filled with ancient tools and oil lamps, as well as his daughter’s painting of an owl. Everything is clean and Harry Horrobin especially enjoys the atmosphere shortly after cleaning. “Words and Emigrated from Harry.” He smiled and said enigmatically: “Who will wash the rain?”
