WHEN THE KING ABDICATED

Former Brigg man Cliff Turner, of 16 Bernard Street, Hamilton, New Zealand, had happy childhood memories rekindled by an image in a recent issue of Nostalgia magazine, compiled by 'yours truly' for the Scunthorpe Telegraph.
He emails: "The picture of the Brigg Grammar School swimming bath in the March Nostalgia interested me as I learnt to swim in it in the summer of 1937. The bath was 15 yards long and five yards wide, three feet deep at one end and six feet at the other. Once I had learnt to swim my mother allowed me to swim in the river at Castlethorpe Bridge.
"The man in the picture is William Lamb, whose main job was teaching Latin. In my first term at the school in December, 1936 Mr Lamb was giving us a lesson in Form IIIA when a message arrived requiring our presence in the main assembly area. Headmaster Daughton then told us that King Edward VIII was to abdicate. We knew that Mr Lamb was a sick man but were nevertheless shocked when he died before the end of term.
"The picture of the suspension bridge at Horkstow came as a revelation. I spent my first 16 years in Brigg but never knew of its existence."


I also have memories of swimming at Brigg Grammar - but not such happy ones. The intense cold of the then unheated swimming pool in September, 1967 - our first week - put me off this particular summer activity for life.
We'd been playing football on the school field, returned to the changing rooms and were then ordered into the pool (by sportsmaster Gerry Longden).
Having enjoyed the warmth of the modern one at Glebe Road School, where steam would often rise from the surface of the water, this came as a terrible shock. Brrrr!
However, there was a plus side: Cricket came to dominate my summers - as it still does more than 40 years later.
Every cloud has a silver lining!