WELL-KNOWN BRIGG ROTARIAN TO BE GUEST SPEAKER AT BRIGGENSIANS' DINNER

Tickets are now available for the annual reunion of Brigg school chums.
The 37th annual dinner of the Briggensians Association will be held on Saturday, March 22 (7pm for 7.30pm) at Elsham Golf Club.
Tickets are £22 - available from Sir John Nelthorpe Upper School, Grammar School Road, Brigg. Call 01652 656551. The closing date is March 12.
Martin Robinson - very well-known in Brigg - will be the guest speaker.
Retired headteacher David Brittain, who edits the association's annual Newsletter, has penned the following about Martin...

Born in 1960 at Twigmoor Hall, the house that was to feature in the failed escape plans of Guy Fawkes, should have perhaps indicated a life full of explosions, bangs and excitement or a life evading the law. Pleasingly, not least to his parents, neither has been the case.
He was educated at Brigg Primary School and Brigg Grammar School where even though he lived in the nearby village of Scawby he stayed as a boarder. He was given the best opportunities to excel which he seemed adept at avoiding for some time. Life in the boarding house holds many vivid memories, not least
playing “Will, Dare or Forced To” against those far braver than he, and enduring nights staring at the emergency lights during ‘the winter of discontent’ whilst electricity was cut off, and most famously breaking both arms during a game of Pirates in the gym one winter’s evening.
Having left school at 16, he prepared for college life by studying for two part time qualifications before departing to Rycotewood College in Oxfordshire to study Agricultural Engineering. Before his final year had been completed, his life was to take a new direction.
He had intended a career within the manufacturing sector of Agricultural Engineering, but the death of a close family relative offered the chance of returning to farming – something deliberately not considered previously. Whilst taking this opportunity and intending reviewing the direction of his life after a few years, he now finds himself 33 years older and not having made time to examine that decision.
However in the meantime he has travelled as a Nuffield Scholar, become a Fellow of the Royal
Geographical Society, been President of the Rotary Club of Brigg, organised and travelled on vehicle dependant expeditions to the south of Morocco, the Jebel Akakus in Libya and the Trans Saharan Highway and Hoggar Mountains in Algeria, as well as marrying Yvonne and helping bring up Tom, Jack and Emily. He currently manages and farms an area just short of 1,700 acres and in various guises, he sits on the Home Grown Cereals Authority Research and KT Committee and is a non-exec board member of the Green Pea Company.
When things have settled down he intends reviewing what direction his career should take, probably just as retirement looms.

Our thanks to David and the Newsletter for the picture of Martin wearing his Brigg District Lions' presidential regalia. We've been to many annual dinners and they are always enjoyable. Book your tickets without delay!