OMINOUSLY FAMILIAR

Unfortunately you can go swimming at Ancholme Leisure Centre this morning...without needing to pay to enter the building and use the indoor heated pool. For the car park, fronting onto Scawby Road, is literally awash with flood water from the nearby New River Ancholme.
With further heavy rain forecast over the next few days, it will be an anxious time for householders and businesses near the Old and New rivers.
Older Brigg folk will be able to recall some notable flood scares of the past, although much work has been done down the years to help stem the tide, such as bank strengthening work near the town centre, notably adjoining Manley Gardens.
Always one of the worst-hit areas is the old sugar factory sports field, adjoining the leisure centre. One year (1981, I think), when the sugar factory cricket team ought to have been starting the new season, the ground was heavily flooded (see this surviving Lincolnshire Times picture by Bryan Robins from the Telegraph's extensive archives).
During the early '90s I visited the leisure centre to do a story on the flood altert and a member of staff was out there, on the factory field, in his canoe!
Cadney Road is a particular low spot, close to the Old River Ancholme, and we had sandbags out there for a time last summer.
Flooding is very upsetting for those affected, and it's human nature to try to apportion blame for the 'wrath of the gods'.
Indeed, such was the anger at the heavy flooding along the Ancholme valley at the beginning of the '80s, an official inquiry was held at the old Angel Hotel ballroom, in Brigg, when angry farmers slammed the Anglian Water Authority for its handling of the situation.
But an AWA official said three inches of rain had falled in 69 hours - almost double the average for the whole month. Although the pumping and drainage equipment had worked efficiently the sheer magnitude of the rainfall was overwhelming.
I covered this meeting for the Lincolnshire Times and feelings were running very, very high. Infact, I'm struggling to remember a public forum where tempers were quite so frayed.
Following on from last June's heavy spell of rain, North Lincolnshire Council, to its credit, has visited parish and town councils throughout the area - a mammoth task - and talked to local community representatives about what can be done. Much effort has been put into trying to cut through the usual red tape - my wording, not that used by North Lincs officials like Geoff Popple. And, in Brigg, gulleys have been cleared and small watercourses cleaned.
However, river flooding is really more of an issue for the Environment Agency, and perhaps Brigg will always have concerns at times of very heavy rain and prolonged rain - unless we get a huge investment at South Ferriby.
What's needed is a system to allow flood water to be pumped out of the Ancholme during high tide in the Humber, when the sluice gates have to be closed - for obvious reasons.
Meanwhile, let's keep fingers well and truly crossed that our town, once again, escapes siginficant flooding, as we have so many times in decades past.