BEST DAYS?

Tonight it will be a case of slipping into nostalgia mode at the annual dinner of the Briggensians' Association, uniting former pupils and staff of Brigg Sixth Form College, Sir John Nelthorpe School, Brigg Grammar and Brigg Girls' High.
As those 100-or-so attending will range in age from 18 to 80-plus, and a typical school life might have been only four to seven years, you don't need a mathematical model to work out there won't be that many same age people to chat to.
But that's not really the point. For the teachers and retired teachers are the uniting factor, some having taught before, and after, the switch to comprehensive status.
It's also true, in the case of Brigg Grammar, that many things did not alter greatly from year to year, or even decade to decade.
I was at BGS from 1967-74, which meant departing the hallowed corridors for the world of work two years before the formation of Sir John Nelthorpe School.
Many of us from the BGS era would not go so far as describing school days as being the best of our lives. But things weren't too bad; often they were pretty enjoyable.
Discipline was firm, with corporal punishment, but not unjust. To quote a modern phrase, they (headmaster H B Williams and staff) drew the line in the sand and we knew where it was, and realised what might well happen, if ever crossed.
In the national press today there is talk of the Tories wanting to open up schools for classes on Saturdays. Now that does bring back some unhappy memories.
Ours was the final intake at Brigg Grammar to have to endure Saturday morning school, and it was very hard to take.
July, 1968 saw the final Saturday morning classes held. True, you got Wednesday afternoon off school - but that was no recompense for losing a free Saturday morning.
However, it was good practice for working life, with Saturday morning shifts the norm at both the Lincolnshire Times and later while on the Scunthorpe Telegraph sports desk.
During my year group's early times at BGS we were taught by long-serving masters like Dr Frank "Toddy" Henthorn (history), Geoff "Shoddy" Jarvis (geography), "Woody" Watts (woodwork), Ray "Doggy" Barker (German) and Vernon Atkin (French).
Among the younger masters who taught us in the late 1960s were: David Brittain (physics), later to become headteacher of Sir John Nelthorpe School, who will hopefully be at tonight's dinner at Elsham Golf Club; Jack Moore (chemistry); and Mike Walker (English).
Mr Walker, whose very high forehead earned him the nickname "Dazzler", was one of the unsung heroes, to whom many of us owe a great deal. He was fanatical about comprehension exercises, involving us boiling down verbose paragraphs into much shorter versions. Much of my working life, sub-editing on newspapers, has involved just that!
Vince Adams, another English department member, encouraged us to write in varied styles and to do comment pieces on plays and music, with some success, but the building blocks of the job in hand came from Mr Walker.
History was a subject I really enjoyed at school, particularly in latter years under the wise guidance of Nick Lyons, who uncovered an interest in local history I never knew existed. Happy times were spent undertaking "digs" on what is now Old Courts Road car park, uncovering fragments of clay pipes, or trudging through mud on the banks of the River Ancholme, in the hope of finding Victorian alley bottles.
Although dips as a first year in the freezing cold, unheated swimming pool put me off that pastime for life, BGS was a good school for sport in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Stan Beedham, from Wrawby, our legendary groundsman, nurtured a cricket square good enough to attract county schoolboy fixtures, and we enjoyed taking to the many decent practice nets dotted around the perimeters of the field, whenever the opportunity arose.
There were house matches to contest, and friendlies against other schools - home and away. Plus the highlight - the annual July "friendly" between the 2nd X1 and The Staff, which the entire school was required to watch.
Football filled up the majority of the school year, and it was quite a joy to score two goals (as late substitute) when Ancholme secured the house title while I was in the sixth form. This was notable because, in my early years there, we had been one of the weaker houses.
Ater complaints, a review was carried out of the boundaries deciding which villages supplied the houses with their sporting talent, resulting in Ancholme (previously only Brigg boys) getting an influx from Nelthorpe (villages off the A18, heading towards Lincoln). This meant Ancholme acquiring some notable sportsmen.
The interesting thing about the Briggensians' dinner is you are never quite sure who is going to turn up - or who will be on your table.
Some people go every year; others every few years. Yet the main interest surrounds old boys/girls who have lost touch down the decades but turn up out of the blue, perhaps after a chance meeting with an old school chum in another part of the country, or even through locating the website www.briggensians.net