S-NOW JOKE IN THE CANDLE KHASI

Older Brigg residents raised in council houses - and some private ones dating back to Victorian times - will remember (without affection) visiting the outside toilet across the yard during the sort of winter we are currently enduring.
Water pipes were lagged with old sacking to stop them freezing and bursting, and it was common to have an oil-fuelled lamp, or mini-burner, on the go to offer some warmth (soon lost when the door was opened to enter or leave).
During miners' strikes, which led to power only being available three days a week, you needed to take a torch with you, or even older form of lighting.
And that prompted the nickname Candle Khasi being afforded, with some humour, to our family's outside facility.
Some more modern Brigg council house-dwellers, on the Springbank estate for example, did not have to venture across the yard. But you most certainly did if you lived in the older varieties, built in the 1920s.
Windows were single, not double-glazed, meaning you woke up to find ice had formed on the INSIDE of the glass in your bedroom. Hot water bottles (purchased from Timothy Taylor's or Boot's) would warm your feet, and some of the older generation would even heat a brick on the fire and put that at the foot of the bed. Wearing socks in bed was a very common practice indeed.
So, younger Brigg Blog readers, if your bathroom radiator is perhaps in need of bleeding and not operating at full capacity, or your boiler breaks down for a few days, consider how it used to be before you lodge loud protests with the head of the household.
You don't know you're born!
During winters long ago one of the most appreciated gifts of all by many old folk in Brigg was a delivery of free wood for the fire - collected on Colonel Nelthorpe's Scawby estate and distributed round town on a lorry by the Scouts. I think this was done by the group connected to Brigg Grammar School and headed by geography master Geoff 'Shoddy' Jarvis. Which would explain the link to Colonel Nelthorpe, long-serving chairman of governors. Anyone confirm that? Somewhere in the Scunthorpe Telegraph archives, inherited from the old Lincolnshire Times, there's an image or two showing Scouts distributing wood in this way.
Could the current winter turn out to be on a par with 1963? I have childhood memories of trudging through a blizzard on Preston Drive, between 'Brigg prefabs' and Hawthorn Avenue, and not being able to catch my breath.
That winter, British Railways had to reinstate many steam locomotives because the modern breed of diesels and electrics couldn't cope with the cold. The other day a railway enthusiast friend (ex-North Lincs) sent me an interesting press release about Tornado (pictured above by Craig Stretton/A1SLT), the steam loco, which kept going at the head of a special train in Kent when modern motive power had been brought to a halt by the wintry weather.
History repeating itself?

PS For those wondering about the origins of the word, the Khasi Hills in India, in the days of the British Raj, were reckoned to be among the wettest places on Earth. They were also somewhere the ruling class went to cool off, rest and reflect on their lives governing the huge country. Brigg Grammar School headmaster Brian Williams (born 1918) studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, and from there went to the Punjab as a member of the Indian Civil Service. In 1947 he returned to England following the granting of independence and went into teaching. We can't say whether he ever visit the Khasi Hills.