Who remembers the summer of 1976?

[DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen]

2 weeks of weather like yesterday,over 30 degrees and 45 days with no rain.

I was 5, I remember endless playing late in the evenings, dad digging a hole and lining it with tarpaulin and filling it with water so we had a paddling pool , riding my chopper bike that my parents bought from our neighbour as he'd outgrown it and lots of ice creams 😂

My brother was born in August of 76 and I was 4. I played out with my friends all day and we didnt go to bed til very late and dark as to enjoy the cooler evenings. All the neighbours sat out together and we had water fights with empty washing up bottles filled out off a communal bucket! Mums took it in turns to make us chips at night in a proper chip pan with lard and put them in newspaper and we demolished them on the steps of our houses..Long,happy days as a child. All the kids dressed in for weeks were vests and pants!

I was 9 and remember playing in the garden every single day. It was lovely! Some places had standpipes because of the water shortage and I was upset that our area didn't need them!!

What’s so lovely is all the children played out, in the fresh air and sunshine. Not stuck inside on computers. Pretty sure they were healthier then.

That's true but I also remember my father telling us off for watching TV on a Saturday morning when we 'should' be outside in the fresh air! 🤣

Oh yes, space hoppers, brilliant fun 😂

I also remember ice lollies made from Robinsons orange squash in an ice cube tray with a cocktail stick ! It was a big day when we actually had a Mr Whippy with a flake

Were you a Swap Shop fan or a Tiswas devotee?
My mum wouldn’t let us watch Tiswas she thought it was not suitable, so I watched Swap Shop.
Tried to ring David Soul when he was in there, was just about to get through to him and my mum put the phone down!
That was before all of the ‘get the bill payer’s permission’ stuff!

We emigrated to Australia when I was 9, returned to the UK when I was mid teens, just before the summer of 76. We seem to have an effect on the weather, as when we went to Australia they had the wettest winter and the hottest summer the year we arrived, and the same thing happened when we returned! I went back to Australia to visit family at Christmas once, and when we landed there was torrential rain, trees bending in the wind, massive puddles in the car park, never happened there before I returned.
1976 was hot but to me it was pleasantly warm. Where we were living at the time they hadn't quite got round to standpipes but they were always showing pictures on the news. The ladybirds were also always on the news, particularly at the seaside if I remember. There was a stream running through the village which nearly dried up and we saw a stranded fish of some description flapping about on the bank that we rescued and took it further downstream to a big pool.
I think my internal thermometer has been permanently adjusted due to being in Australia for years, as I will not go out without a cardigan, just in case, as the slightest breeze I'm scrabbling to put it on, and in supermarkets I'm always the one in a jumper or fleece. It's a bloody hot day if I've got my jumper off!

Thanks! I remember the weezy giggles about something.

I haven't read on since last night and I have googled in between and there seems to be some doubt about the Holding Willey story, except two men said he was reading out a letter which had the words in. So now I don't know anything, but it's too good a line not to remember.

I was revising for my mock O levels, sitting in the garden with my feet in a bucket of cold water. I don't actually remember it being THAT hot - I spent most of the weekends hurtling around on horses and I was probably just more resilient, because this last week was bordering on uncomfortable for me.

Definitely not allowed to watch Tiswas and Blue Peter was preferred over Magpie. I can't think we watched anything other than BBC for children's programmes.

Yes we had stand pipes outside the front gate although they were never used and I had chicken pox. I also remember mum making Camp coffee and putting it in the fridge with ice cubes and Heinz sandwich spread sandwiches in the tent in the garden. I was 10.

Same here. BBC was acceptable, ITV was a bit common. Wasn't allowed to watch Saturday morning TV, we were expected to be out Doing Things. I had a slightly uptight childhood on reflection.

@Tooty78 Jilly Cooper's Octavia has stayed with me all my life. Those images of sports cars dashing along country lanes, cow parsley brushing the side of the car as the sun goes down and a handsome man's tanned hands on the steering wheel.

Girls in bikinis sunbathing on the roof of the barge, the spires of Oxford rising up across the fields and stiff gins, cold ham. salad and new potatoes with butter and mint for lunch. Honestly, I think it's formed my idea of the perfect summer day.

I like to think other people still remember those lovely stories too.

We were never allowed ITV on unless my dad watched The Sweeney.
I was brought up to believe only the BBC has proper, accurate news. Not a tabloid in the house either.
Can remember being in a friend’s as a teen watching Corrie and feeling subversive.

The ladybird swarms are specific to living by the coast I think as they have nowhere else to go. I remember swarms in later years hot years. Biblical in proportion. Has to be experienced personally to accept its real.

I was 20 and have no memories of it at all. I think maybe I was going through a romance famine and just stayed in my room listening to sad songs…

Same! Only the Times, Sunday Times or Telegraph, and the only soap was the Archers. My granny, an out and out snob, watched Corrie which she saw as her allowable vice.

We had come home from Singapore in 75, and I was suppose to be revising for my mock o levels in 76 but spent most of the time mucking about on the river behind our house. The heat was great after the cold winter which I hated after Singapore.

We didn't have stand pipes but Dad had started an allotment so all used water was syphoned off and used to water the garden.

Mum had put a save water sticker on the toilet cistern which was still there years later.

4 inches of water in the bath which I didn't have to share being the only girl. Twin younger brother and two older brothers shared two baths each.

The grass was just a brown wasteland and Dad's roses just a limp mess.

Oh to be 15 again and having the fun we had with a paddleboard a canoe and a surfboard ( not that we surfed but we used it as a paddleboard). We used to come in in the evening brown as berries, our tan just being topped up from years in the tropics and eating salad everyday.

Mum still baked every Sunday as she said she couldn't afford to feed 4 teen age boys if she didn't. The kitchen was like an oven.

Dad built a wooden frame from boards and filled it with a tarpaulin and then filled it with water ( when nobody was looking) we spent hours lying in it reading as well. Mum used to sit with her feet in it shelling peas.

We didn't get the ladybirds I don't think as I don't remember them.

I am going to file everything as an ‘allowable vice’ from now on….

Yep, I was nearly six. My Grandma made me a Summer dress from very fine cotton lawn, in yellow gingham and it was beautifully cool to wear.

I remember lots of lessons being held outdoors in the shade of the mature beech trees that lined the school playground.

And when the back seat of my Dad's sky blue Ford Escort caught fire because of the sun retracting in the rear view mirror! High drama and the fire brigade arrived.

I was on my own on the prom in just my cossie and sandals when the ladybirds arrived. I was only quite small, but was allowed to go to the beach by myself, (because I was ‘so sensible’ - it really was a different time😹).

The ladybirds were everywhere - in my hair, mouth, up my nose. I ran screaming all the way home, spitting ladybirds out as I went. I’ve hated them ever since and just the thought of one makes me feel sick!

Re: The weather - it was the drought that really bothered me as the adults were so worried about it. I remember being told to pray for rain - so I dutifully did - every night for weeks on end!

i was flat sharing a 7th floor flat in the very centre of London. We would come home from our shifts at the hospital and flake out.
We couldn’t get any air flow through the flat at all. I remember hot pavements!

I still go misty eyed thinking about that endless summer. I had just turned 18 and was working with my then best friend as a chambermaid in West Wales. We couldn't have timed it better! The hotel had a swimming pool and was in a beautiful location not too far from the coast. We started work early but knocked off about 12pm so the rest of the day was spent sunbathing, swimming, going to parties or being invited on boat trips. We practically lived in our bikinis. If I could turn back the clock.

Edited to say I remember the water shortage and lots of wild fires (sadly). I also remember hearing about the ladybird plague in other areas but I don't recall it happening in West Wales.

@Arraminta our neighbour had that sky blue Ford Escort, it was my dad’s dream car.

I was 7. I had chicken pox.