It's the summer of '76 and I'm off to the corner shop on my bike....

[barbedwired]

And I'm getting an orange mivvy, and some fruit salads

I’m sitting inside to avoid the plague of biting ladybirds. Looking forward to going to a residential hockey course for a week where there will be BOYS!

Please will you get me four flying saucers, two black jacks, two fruit salads and some milk teeth with this 5p?

I’m going swimming on the beach with my friend Paul, from over the road. The sea is covered with ladybirds; we part them as we go in, but then get squeamish because they’re all over us. We sunbathe instead. Paul goes browner and browner; I go redder and redder.

After tea, we play tennis across the road, under the streetlight. It’s a new estate, and there aren’t any cars. We play till almost 10 o’clock because it’s the school holidays. I slip my Wrangler ’Spirit of 76’ hooded sweatshirt on over my towelling t-shirt. It has a flock horse, rearing up, on the front.

I pick up my black Grifter bike (a hand me down from a relative) from the driveway and put it in the garage before I go in to our bungalow. Mum and Dad are watching TV- we still have a black and white one. They’re sitting on our Grandparents’ old three piece suite. Mum has a glass of Newcastle Brown because she’s breastfeeding my brother and she needs the iron.

I feed my pet mice and fish, then go to bed. The skin on my back and shoulders feels tight and hot.

I wish Paul was my boyfriend....

Do you mean tic tacs?*
Tictacs were (still are?) mints. The little liquorices in the tin were Imps.

I'm 13 and went to school camp first week of the school holidays, a week on a scorched field by a small trickle of a river wandering around in bare feet, shirts and a cheese cloth shirt over my bikini top.

Later to spend a week on the Gower coast in Wales , in an apartment block directly on the beach, playing cricket with my dad and brother and mum would call us up when lunch was ready. We thought the flat was very posh as it had a telephone!

I think we had sun hats but not sun screen.

Other songs around were Real Thing - you to me are everything and Candi Staton - young hearts run free.,

I'm only 2 and my mum is in the hospital giving birth to my sister....and it's so hot it keeps setting off the fire alarms.

Can you get me an Amazin Raisin please?

I am five years old and I am in granny's back garden having a doll's tea party. I am wearing the blue batik dinosaur tee shirt that my much more glamorous cousins brought back from America.

Granny is impervious to heat and is letting the tea pot sit for at least 20 minutes to "brew". Mummy is at work because she is modern. Granny is babysitting me in the school holidays and is not remotely modern. She has a scullery and a mangle that she still uses. She never wears trousers and would not contemplate leaving the house without her hat firmly applied to her head. It looks extremely similar to the tea cosy.

In 30 years time I will allow my eldest daughter wear the dinosaur tee shirt, which I have kept. She will also love it and will wear it until it is so tight she can no longer get it over her head. I will be very nostalgic indeed.

My sister and I are watching Rentaghost, we love Why Don’t You? as well but Black Beauty and Little House On The Prairie are our favourites. Later we might play with our Holly Hobby dolls, mum has made us similar pinafore dresses. She’s also frozen some cola in Tupperware moulds to make ice pops for us and life for 8 year old me seems just perfect.

20 B&H, I've got the pound note and the penny, I can barely see over the counter but it's OK because "the shopkeeper knows us". I haven't got crippling hay fever for the first summer ever because it's so hot all the grass has died.

I'm 9 and playing 2 balley against the garage wall. I would love a packet of Tudor crisps and a packet of cola Spangles

Highlight of the holiday is when we have lunch out - gammon and pineapple with chips, knickerbocker glory and a coke float. So sophisticated

I'm wearing an embroidered linen blouse that a friend of my mum's brought home from a visit to her brother in Madeira, which is close to Africa. It is almost the first item of clothing I've ever worn that wasn't a hand-me-down, and that and its impossibly exotic provenance mean I love it and wear it all summer until I grow out of it.

On holiday in Great Yarmouth I will get horribly sunburned because everyone knows that can't happen in the UK, even when the sand is melting.

I remover liking his voice but not hers so much

I've got chicken pox and I'm hot and itchy! I'm flicking through my copy of Twinkle comic and drinking a nice, cool glass of Lucozade which mum says make me feel better. I like the bumpy, glass bottle and the cellophane wrapper.

I am ten and revelling in the longest hottest summer school holidays that just seemed to go on forever. There is no grass - just scorched earth that is cracked like a jigsaw puzzle. I am playing What time is it Mr Wolf with my nephews who lived in the house across from ours. Happy memories!

Bunty comic please

@ChilliMayo @BikeRunSki Finally! Other people who know it! I still say it to warn DH if we are out and someone dodgy is around😂

I'm 8 years old and live in a small village in Northern Ireland. My mum is getting married again to an English man and we're moving to London in a couple of weeks. I don't want to live in London away from my daddy and granny and all my family and friends. London is very big I won't know anyone and I've seen on TV there are bombs in London. I'm scared I don't want to go.

I'm around 8 months old. Probably been to the beach with my Nan and grandad.
I know it was the Summer of the lady birds. My mum and Dad used to talk a lot about it.

@hazeyjane

I commented way back on the thread how terrified I was of those straws.
Even now if I've had cause to recall I remember I really was scared they'd get me!

Shockers

What a perfect day and situation you describe.

I want you to get together with Paul, he sounds lovely!

20 Embassy red for my next door neighbour, (selling fags to a junior school age kid was apparently ok).

And a Lord Toffingham ice cream

It's hot, my mum has put my wigwam over my paddling pool so I can wallow in the pool out of the sun.

It must have been before they turned the water off as later I remember standing in a queue for water with a bucket.

I keep burning (no sun cream for children)