CRYING SHAME

The announcement yesterday there is to be no Brigg summer fair in August is very depressing indeed, not only for the people of the area who enjoyed the street entertainment and fun events provided in the Market Place and Wrawby Street, but also for town traders, whose tills were kept busy by the visiting crowds.
With the fair stretching back in time more than 800 years, we now have to hope the travelling/gypsy community still turns up to stage the horse fair.
For that event - run separately to the summer fair these days - is purely unofficial.
The police keep a watching brief, some barriers are put along Station Road (near the Hewson House council offices) and everyone does their best to keep away the horses being paraded a safe distance from onlookers of all ages.
But in today's culture of risk assessments and extensive health and safety legislation, there's no way organisations like Brigg Town Council and North Lincolnshire Council want to get involved with the horse fair part of the event.
It passed off peacefully last year, with no reported mishaps. And many, many townsfolk, and visitors, enjoyed watching the horses being traded in the centuries-old manner.
But it's a great shame the continuity of one of our town's great traditions now rests on whether travellers from other parts of the UK decide it's still worth bringing their steeds to Brigg on 'oss fair day.
And there's another potential problem: Will the travellers stage the event on the traditional August 5 (a Tuesday), or go for the nearest Saturday (August 2)when bigger crowds will obviously turn out?
Maybe Coun Tom Glossop will be able to help clear that up, nearer the time. For, in the days when he chaired the community association which oversaw the event for a time, he used to have some useful contacts in the travelling community which came to trade horses in Brigg.
Pictured above is a typical scene from last year's Brigg horse fair, held on a Saturday.