Outlook
Avoid life’s the Titus
Thomber way
THEY swung at last onto a narrow track, rutted and pitted through centuries of hard usage and pitiless weathering. The carriage leapt forward, lurching vio lently as its wheels plunged into deep, water-filled troughs, or glanced vio lently from sh atterin g mounds of rock. A strange dread began to
TITUS Thornber, Cliviger’s answer to Wild Bill Hickock, with his (t)rusty steed, and constant companions Judd and Roy
Don’t miss Earby May Day
THE biggest social nt in Earby’s calen dar is coming up this i... ath — the annual May Day festival. The event will take place on Sunday
afternoon May 20th and organisers are praying for the same wonderful sunny weather and record attendance they had last year. A real carnival atmosphere prevails. There’s a traditional procession through
the town followed by crowning of the May Queen at journey’s end — Springfield sports ground. A celebrity is booked to open the event, last year it was a former Coronation Street star, and there is all the fun of an old-fashioned fair — stalls, games, rides, bands, displays, competi tions and candy floss. Money raised goes to charity and to help stage community events in the town.
gnaw at their souls as they drove deeper into the wild ocean of moorland - should they overturn or become bogged down, it could put an end to them. Onward they toiled, the painful jour ney seemingly endless, until, suddenly, they came upon the high and desolate farmhouse. The carriage stopped, and
TONY THORPE meets a remarkable man who has just compiled a book of local walks. . . and you certainly won’t catch him in a Bank Holiday traffic jam!
the mile-and-a-half track to his house (including a very worrying and much bent and twisted cattle grid) IS life-threatening to the suspension of an Austin Metro, with the exception of a 200-yard section, right in the middle, of perfectly-laid cobblestone causeway.
they dismounted. Air was still, save the bleating of some isolated sheep and the cawing of black witch-coven crows. A raw wind cut their skin, while vast, black- suited gangster clouds loi tered above them, threaten ing sudden and dreadful violence. N e r v o u s l y t h e y
approached the house and knocked: no sound came for a minute, then, from the side of the building,flew two dogs, yapping and circling, and finally the grey-haired man appeared. The travellers held out
I
th e i r hands: “M is te r Thornber,” said the suave, debonaire, handsome one, “We’re from the Burnley Express.”
^ (M itt Mlnkz\j A 3Ftreplaces
Bronteisms, but Titus Thornber, author of a new book entitled “Taking the Car for a Walk”, inspires a little atmosphere. And it’s all true, except that we were in the Outlook van, not a carriage. He DOES live in majestic isolation,
Pardon the Charlotte CHAPTER TWO
w i th a r em a r k a b le th o ro u g h n e s s , maybe because he only does what he wants, and can do it, therefore, with a full heart. He seems at first to be a walking paradox, until you realise the truth of it: unlike most of us, he has selected his priorities and lives by them, however incongruous they may seem at first glance. Second glance shows them to be far from incongruous. We followed him into a
century about Titus. In fact, in some very agreeable and frankly humbling ways, he is a very 20th century man indeed. But he’s more than that, because he hasn’t let it strangle him, nor does he use it as a stick to beat other people over the head. He is what he is, his own man: what he wants of the 20th century he embraces, what he doesn’t want he rejects, without malice, and without hesitation. What he does, he does
But there’s nothing 19th
untidy - ramshackle, even - with few signs of modern comforts, but the window frames were new, and there was a telephone in the cor ner. Like I said, priorities. Titus’s two sheep dogs, Roy and Judd, never left his side.
farmhouse th a t makes Emmerdale look palatial and settled down in the rus tic but comfortable living room, a coal fire glowing gently. The room was
himself as a complex per sonality. It’s an understate ment. At school he dis played three passions that obssess him still - English literature, history and what he calls “mechanisims” - but when it came to a choice, he eschewed academia in favour of engineering because it presented the best chance of employment.
CHAPTER THREE Titus Thornber describes
It was a bad choice. He
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