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!

I was 7 and we lived in Army quarters in Aldershot.
My mum loved the sun and was always sitting out, I wasn't a fan. She used to peg a sheet up for me to sit under.

I was 7 and we lived in Army quarters in Aldershot.
My mum loved the sun and was always sitting out, I wasn't a fan. She used to peg a sheet up for me to sit under.

Took my Olevels that year. After they finished I spent the next few weeks sunbathing in the garden (used ambre solaire) then started my first holiday job in July. Was great having so much time to myself then my first proper wages (other than a bit of baby sitting and paper round money).

I'm fairly ancient too. Was in my late teens then. I've just Googled the UK hits - OMG, the memories! I also remember Mum & Dad saving 'grey water' (is that what it's called?) so we could water the garden. I sunbathed. Wore Biba clothes! It seems a different world away.

Fru I was 14 and had a Biba sweatshirt that I practically lived in.

I still love the label.

Buckled railway tracks.
The dusty/tarmaccy smell when it started to rain.
Peeling skin off in long ribbons/sheets.

Guide camp in the heat. The only activity suitable for the weather was a trip to the swimming baths every afternoon. I left a pair of Clarks sandals in the garden, the opened toe ones with two buckled straps across. They had crepe soles which melted. My mum getting cross with me because I changed my clothes 'every two minutes'. I was simply trying to find something cool enough to wear.

I was eleven , my mum was ill that year and we spent practically the whole summer with my grandparents .I remember having the water rationed , long days in the garden , 3 weeks in the caravan at Hayling Island .Cheesecloth shirts , the peasant scarf look

y6 camp and it was bloody hot. Liverpool and United in cup final.
News reports of frying eggs on pavements.
Playing out all day, really good/bad thunder storms, depending on your pov.
Roots was on tv, I watched but didn't understand it all.
Looking forward to winter as mum had promised me a Starsky jacket.

I was 10, my cousin lived on a farm and I practically spent the whole school holidays there. We would lie outside listening to the Beach Boys and eating ice poles I remember the farm being very dry and dusty.
My uncle made us a swimming pool from bales of hay and tarpaulin and we lounged around all day getting browner and browner in the sun,
That summer seemed to last for so long.......

Nope I wasen't born yet, a year later, but my mum said is was extremely hot.

I was 4. I have two main memories.
Firstly in our village around 50% of houses had thatch, there seemed to be a fire every night - I will never live in a thatched house because of this.
Secondly going to the village shop to get a block of Neapolitan ice cream and they wrapped it in newspaper for us to get it home frozen.

'If it's yellow, stay mellow. If it's brown, flush it down!' Standpipes in the street and hosepipe detector vans. And didn't someone do a rain dance at the end of August to try to end the drought?

Doing mock O' levels with streaming hayfeaver and you didn't get any sympathy then!
My favourite purple hotpants and cheesecloth shirt
Happy days!

17, one hell of a tan and dancing in the street when it finally rained!

I was 3, my brother nearly 2. Can't really remember it but we have pictures of us both naked in the garden and my mum sunbathing in a bikini and mahoosive sunglasses. My dad is in one pic too with a huge moustache.

I was 13. We lived near the Gower so every weekend was spent on the beach. My Grandmother would come with us sometimes and keep her coat and chapel hat on.

I got heatstroke and missed all the exams ans spent a week in bed eating boiled eggs with salt. I was very ill.

Yy to fires. I remember 2. We lived on one side of a valley that had farmed fields on the other side. That caught fire which was scary and on the way to relatives in Wales we had to drive past a tree covered hill that was ablaze.

Also having all my long hair cut off because it was too sweaty and itchy and we only had water for a few hours a day.

My A level year, after years at boarding school was in sixth form college and just having the time of my life....blasting down the Hogs Back to Guildford on my Norton motorbike in full evening dress, bow tie and crash helmet, to a fantastic party in an Elizabethan manor, nude swimming at dawn in the outdoor pool...

Fire fighting in the local woods as they went up due to tinder dry conditions, getting very very drunk at a Bi-Centennial party, fear free sex as the pill was universal and AIDS was a decade away...I was a very happy boy

Oh my gosh - you go off to cook tea and come back to 4 pages' worth - what fun!

Glad to see there are so many 50-somethings (or thereabouts) here.

The ladybirds!! I'd so forgotten that. Reading the comments I suddenly had a flashback to an image I'd not thought of for 40 years of ladybirds actually being WASHED UP ON A BEACH in waves. Could that have actually happened?? I either saw it in real life or on the TV news - probably the latter.

And yes to me and Mum lying in the garden slathered in Ambre Solaire - to "promote tanning" - looks at brown speckled face in the mirror ...

Funny, I don't remember it as over-hot. Just dry dry dry

I was nearly 10. My mum made me a crimpolene dress that was bright yellow. I stepped outside and was instantly covered in greenfly/aphids
where were the bloody ladybirds that day

Lying in the sun supposedly studying. Smothering myself in baby oil. Hot, hot, hot.

I hear i spent that summer in my silver cross pram in the evening...no idea if thats true...

biting ladybirds

An earlier thread about air conditioning (and this month's weather)

Well, for a start ,where I live this month has been pleasantly warm with one or two hot days, not blisteringly hot and not weather that has required air conditioning.

1976 was a glorious summer. I was 17, living in the south of England and had no cares in the world. We often had lessons in the school field and I remember seeing the Red Arrows practising for the Biggin Hill air show, as my school was only a couple of hills away.

I had a Saturday job in the lighting department of BHS and we weren't allowed to have bare legs. So we wore tights during the hottest summer underneath the hundreds of lights in the lighting display. I was drenched when I left work.

I went on a memorable camping holiday with seven other girls and we had a fantastic time.

I have wonderful memories of that summer and no summer since then has come near it.