HOW MANY BRIGG FOLK WILL BE EATING OUT THIS CHRISTMAS?

It's always a sign that Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat when you pop into the Black Bull pub, in Brigg town centre, and leaflets are on the bar advertising the festive fare and Christmas Day menu.
This year if you wish to have your December 25 dinner with mine hosts Richard and Amber Smith it will cost you £38.50p (£18.50 for children).
The Christmas Fayre Menu will be available from December 2 and is £18.95p for three courses (coffee included).
Pint of mild in hand (showing our age there!) Brigg Blog picked up one of these leaflets to study on Saturday night, which set us thinking about Christmases past in Brigg pubs.
Times have certainly changed over the past 30-plus years. We no longer see the mass exodus of staff from businesses heading straight to the pubs when they finish work for the festive season. (Last one out switch off the lights!). Nor are there as many 'treat the staff' events, with or without the always appreciated but sometimes abused free bar or "tab."
We recall (early 1980s) a Lincolnshire Times Christmas dinner held in an upstairs room at Dunham's bakery, in Bridge Street. 
Another year, a small group of us went to the Brocklesby Ox - now sadly gone - for a drink or three.
Many a good Christmas Eve and Boxing Day was spent at the dear old Queen's Arms, with Jean and Gail Cunningham and later Bob and Sue Nicholson. Plus visits to the Black Bull over the many years Coun and Mrs Tony Sykes were running the Wrawby Street venue.
In Alan Long's time as mine host at the now dearly departed Ancholme Inn, on Grammar School Road, the function room was booked solid. And most of use will have vivid memories of queuing to get served by Myles and Mary at a packed Scanlon's, with The Pogues' most famous song playing again and again on the old jukebox.
Many of us joined Baz Fewster at the Gladiator, and Phil and Dawn at the Britannia. It's not that many years ago since legendary punk band The Diseased got back together again to play a Christmas session at The Brit, with licensee Phil as guest vocalist!
Other Brigg Blog followers will have happy memories of festive nights out at the Woolpack, Lord Nelson/Hardy's, Exchange and the newest on the block, the Yarborough Hunt, plus the Servicemen's Club and Brigg Town FC's Hawthorns clubhouse.
Sorry if we've missed anyone in our brief round-up. If we have, since apologies. Please put it down to lapse of memory caused by having one cider too many!
Hopefully the tills will ring merrily for all our hostelries this Christmas and New Year. Come January, of course, JD Wetherspoon will be coming to town with the refurbished White Horse - very real competition for all our existing "watering holes".