GOLDEN MEMORIES OF BRIGG HORSE FAIR

In the countdown to tomorrow's Brigg Horse Fair 2012 (Saturday, August 4) from 10am in Station Road, Brigg Blog thought it fitting to turn the clock back to the early 1970s when the event was staged in the Cary Lane area.
These images were captured by Coun Ken Fisher, of Central Square, a keen amateur photographer, and are taken from his archive of images passed down within the family after his death.
On the subject of Nostalgia, this week's edition of the Scunthorpe Telegraph includes an interesting look back to December 31, 1999 when many townsfolk visited Brigg and district pubs to say farewell to one Millennium and welcome in the new one.
The colour images reproduced by the Telegraph in a special feature from that memorable night include ones of Lee Johnson and Andy Longden - Brigg "men about town" - plus bar staff at the Black Bull (including current landlady Amber Smith); Pete Kerridge, Denise Torpey (of Brigg Amateur Social Historians) and Karl Dixon; plus Diana Goulding and others enjoying the night in the Lord Nelson.
It's well worth getting a copy of this week's Telegraph, if you haven't already done so.
Many others from the same night live on in the paper's extensive archive, together with loads more Brigg pix of the past.
"Yours truly" stood in as auxiliary cameraman on December 31 and toured Brigg area pubs taking pix of happy revellers. Well, someone had to do it!
These pix, and many others from Scunthorpe and district, were included in a special 32-page Party Time colour publication produced by the Scunthorpe Telegraph to mark the milestone.
Fortunately, we kept a copy in our collection of publications from the past. 
When we venture forth to Station Road tomorrow to record scenes from the 2012 Brigg Horse Fair the images will be colour, of course. And we might even take some video footage. All a far cry from the situation 40 years ago when Ken returned home to develop his black and white films of the Horse Fair in the darkroom he fashioned for himself in our converted coalhouse. We had a concrete bunker by then to store the "nutty slack" delivered from Brigg railway station yard on Joe Brocklesby's flatbed lorry.
There were still a couple of years to go before Brigg Urban District Council modernised the council houses on our estate - and others in the town - and added the luxury of central heating .