to ask for your reminiscences of summer 1976?

[kitnkaboodle]

... if you're old enough! An earlier thread about air conditioning (and this month's weather) has led me to think about that year.

I was 12 and can personally remember (in the Midlands) ALL the grass being dry and brown, not flushing the toilet and being told off by my aunt for running a tap unnecessarily. It wasn't desperately hot, was it? Just very sunny and dry for week after week. I remember my mum saying it started in (..July?) and carried on until October, when storms broke it. She said that you could plan ahead what to wear or do, as you knew it was just going to be bright blue skies when you opened the curtains each morning.

Not sure how actually accurate all that is!

Walking across a dried up, cracked, reservoir with my Dad. I was scared the water was going to appear from nowhere.

Helping a teacher to put bricks in the toilets.

My first thought was of the ladybirds too. I remember counting them on the way home from school.

I also went camping with my dad and there were so many on the ground that we had to drive over them and the sound of crunching! Ugh. I remember them biting too.

Being 24 and went to London . It was roasting. Why rant summers like that any more.
I remember going to a pancake house near car any st called my old Dutch. Sat outside eating a huge pancake.

Cor, that was living ? Love to love you baby Donna summer in the charts. You sexy thing hot chocolate . Just fabulous.

Can't even.

All this reminiscing ........... and bang on the news is a story about an exhibition at Weston-Super-Mud featuring Banksy, and others. The venue is one I went to in '77/78 with my tutor group. It was freezing. I wish it had been '76. I told my my Mum on the phone tonight who I snogged on the Ghost Train at the end of the pier.

Aged 13.

Alesssi Brothers - Oh Lori.

In unrequited love with S, whose family moved away to England that summer. Oh the angst.

My parents married in '76. Their weddin party - on my Grandma's lawn - went on till dawn. Guests slept in the garden.

Didn't wear shoes all summer and ended up with verruccas!

My mum sucking the bathwater down a hosepipe to water the veg and getting a mouthful every time, that all the household had been in!

and the ladybirds...

I was in junior school, that was the best summer ever

I had just turned 14 and was living in Bournemouth. Spent every day of the school holidays with friends on the beach by the pier, and not being believed by holiday makers around us that we really actually lived there! We felt so lucky.
Abba's Dancing Queen blaring on the radio as we sunbathed.
Deep sun tan that glowed against my beloved best pale turquoise halter neck top.

1976 is going to be repeated (almost) tomorrow for one day only in the south east of England.

I was three and am told we went to a rented cottage in Wales and my very first (of millions) of freckles appeared on my cheeks!!!

It would have been my wedding anniversary today if I'd stayed married. 39 years.

its great reading these
it's my birthday tomorrow and i was always told about the super hot summer (which ended immediately or almost immediately after my birth!)

I was here with dm on holiday. Buying loads of cheap cotton dresses in Chelsea girl, swimming outdoors at Loughborough pool with dcousins, waiting outside the mucky duck for the bus in sheffield and seeing a poster for the Sex Pistols. (Being told I couldnt go). My da's bri nylon sheets.

Ladybirds! Just this weekend we were at a party and the subject came up. I said about the biting and the people I was talking to wouldn't have it one bit. Glad I'm not going mad .

Bit late joining in, but better late than never. Blame it on a rather wet week in Wales minus my laptop, and two compulsory password changes in as many days!

Anyway, back on topic. I was still at primary school in the east of England and young enough not to have experienced a real heat-wave before. For me, 1976 meant:

Ladybirds - swarms of the things, and if what they did to you wasn't exactly biting, it was a good imitation. And unprovoked, too.

Water shortage, and sharing baths with my sister - we hadn't got a shower in those days.

Hosepipe ban and recycling shared bathwater down to the garden. Dad rigged up his winemaking syphon and a length of hose, which actually worked rather well.

Seemingly endless scorching days in the garden - largely spent wearing little more than our knickers, and often less when we were in the paddling pool.

Equally hot nights - when Mum and Dad finally declared aforesaid knickers superfluous, and we were encouraged to go to bed au naturelle.

I wasn't due to be born for another seven years but my mum was just 14 and she recalls wearing crimplene trousers which chafed her legs really badly - oh to sacrifice comfort for style!

Playing in a collapsing inflatable paddling pool, siblings and me having white blonde hair, nipping fingers in a sun lounger, grass all bleached out and yellowy.
I had an inflatable dolphin which was my favourite possession. It kept getting punctured and was patched up with loads of insulating tape.

I remember my ladybird paddling pool, my Mum filling the bath and every available saucepan with water every night as it was turned of during the day and my Nan's driveway being too hot to walk on with bare feet. I was 6 years old.

On Newquay beach and portable radios everywhere. Songs like these: -

Elton John & Kiki Dee - Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Abba - Dancing Queen
Chicago - If You Leave Me Now
Dr Hook - A Little Bit More
The Real Thing - You To Me Are Everything
Candi Staton - Young Hearts Run Free
The Real Thing - Can't Get By Without You
Leo Sayer - You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
Barry White - You See The Trouble With Me

I was 13 1/2 that Summer - my strongest memory was of getting a massive rash all over my body from eating so many strawberries. I have never been allergic to them since. I also stayed indoors a fair bit with the dog as neither of us could stand a whole day it the garden with the sun beating down.

I had my 9th birthday party and spent the whole day in a tent made from a clothes horse and a blanket watching my friends play in my garden, because if I ventured out I got a nosebleed. I'll never ever forget it.

Leaning how to brush teeth with just half a cup of water : a skill that I've used many times at festivals since

Fires where the grass was so dry in the park and some wazzock dropped a bottle

Water being switched off during the day

Going to Boston for the Bicentennial and having to walk that bloody trail

very hot, bath with a friend and I sat my A levels.

My brother and I were stuck with my gran for the summer. Remember hanging round in the gardens of endless church ladies houses wilting and bored silly. And if we were good (i.e. didn't remind anyone that we were there) we'd get taken to the paddling pool to cool down every few days. Remember walking round it on my hands with the rest of me under the water feeling deliciously cold.