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!

We were on court 1, but at about 6pm some kind people who were leaving centre court gave us their tickets

It was hot, hot, hot and everyone was trying to save water.
There was talk of no mains water and having to collect water using standpipes at the end of the road.

It was the year I moved to the UK and I thought that was just what the UK was like - hotter than the sun, and you had to get your water from a pipe in the street even though you had taps. I thought it was a weird, backwards sort of country :o.

A FB friend from schooldays posted some photos from 76 recently - lots of small kids who had clearly never seen a bottle of suntan lotion and had spent the summer outdoors. So, so tanned - you just wouldn't see that now.

We had a siphon set up for bathwater , out of the bathroom window and down to my paddling pool so that the garden could be watered.

Denis Howell being appointed as "Minister for Drought" and the next day it rained!

Yup and I remember one news report pointing out how suitable he would be for the job because his name started with HO, so could be read as H20, and ended in WELL, where you could keep the water!

Actually what I remember most was that after all those weeks and weeks of drought the weather finally broke on the day my big sister got married and the heavens opened. We had all gone to the hairdressers in the morning and then my dad had to make an emergency dash with brollies and headscarves so we could get back without our hair getting blown to bits.

I was a bridesmaid for the first and last time in a long blue flowery dress.

I remember it and was under 10. It was hot, dry, brown, etc.

And my mum was ill with hepatitis. But we managed okay, I recall a lot of chores, intially at least.

Playing outside for hours on end, with no rain to chase you back in.

Scout camp in hot weather, except for the 'day out' at the seaside.

It was very fucking hot. All the time. Your mum used to come into your room at night and tell you to go to sleep a lot because you never were because it was too hot. I got stickers to put on my bike about saving water. But they didn't last long (they weren't waterproof). I made my grandma run home from school every day because I 'convinced' her that running meant getting a breeze and it would be cooler. Poor woman.

Ah,the summer of 1976! I was 16 and had my very first boyfriend,he was 16 also. I remember wearing a button through skirt patterned with tiny flowers and a matching top. I was slim and pretty then,unlike now!
You could get a railcard that basically took you all over Wales,the lakes,Blackpool for a set fee. Every morning my boyfriend would come to meet me at home for our day's adventure,he always brought me a little token,like a flower. We were very innocent and in young love.
I eventually married him in January 1979 and we had four daughters.
My lovely first boyfriend was,is, my husband for 36 years, Sadly he passed away in May just gone.
But what memories of the summer of 76!

Elton John and Kiki Dec were number one for weeks and weeks. I lived in a hostel in London during the summer and worked in a shoe shop on Oxford Street.
Then I got married. I think I must have had a touch of the sun.

Kiki Dee...

Lovely nightcapers

I was 7

Elton John and Kiki Dee were in the charts, as were the Wurzels (I had both singles - effortless cool!)

Starsky and Hutch were Gods (and the names of our pet mice)

there was a plague of ladybirds on the beach (biblical!)

my nanna was in hospital with a broken hip, it was 2 bus rides away to visit her, and it felt like travelling to the moon.

there was a really squishy bit of tarmac at the bottom of our road

eating a zoom lolly whilst squishing your feet on the tarmac was loverly.

me and my next door neighbour, esther, liked to sit on the pavement by our houses and make perfume out of the white stuff that came out of dandelion stalks.

it was really, really hot, but I still wore a lot of dark brown nylon.

I was 16 in 1976. My Mum sent me on a YHA Adventure Holiday walking in The Malverns and the Wye Valley in August. I remember the River Wye being empty with the river bed cracked and totally dried up. We ate watermelons to cool down. I thought it had snowed at the beginning of June which stopped the cricket but I may be mistaken; then no rain until September.

Yes, just checked, it did snow on 2nd June 1976. We had a litter of black labrador puppies and I have photo of one of them in the snow on that day. It was wonderful being a teenager in the 70s.

Thanks for mentioning the snow thing. I remembered it but thought others might think I was completely bonkers. And the ladybirds did sort of bite.

I was another who did O levels that year, all my revision done in the garden while sunbathing. I'm amazed there are so many of us similar age, I always assume I am ancient on here

It was the summer of my first love, a boy from the year above at school, very innocent but very intense. They were long, hot days of hanging out with friends, we used to take a little transistor radio out with us and the music was great - 'Don't go breaking my heart' by Elton john and Kiki Dee, 'You to me are everything' by The Real Thing, 'Dancing Queen' by Abba, 'A little bit more' by Dr Hook and 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen.

I still think it was the best summer ever (although I have had my moments since )

I missed it as I had just taken an exciting new job and moved to Australia - it was winter there

Dancing Quen playing everywhere there too

Queen

Bay City Rollers

Slik

A friend of my brother brought 'round an album by Queen to play on my Dad's expensive hifi, in '76. I think it was 'A night at the opera'. My mum asked why would the band be called 'Queen?' Jokingly DBs friend replied something about being very good boy scouts. Then 1977 happened.

Have just spent three days , at her parents' old home, with a friend whose bridesmaid I was that summer. They had a lovely garden to which all guests repaired after the wedding . She told me her father-the most law- abiding man imaginable- had sneaked out at night under cover of darkness (they live in the middle of nowhere !) to water the lawn in the weeks before, so it would look good in the photographs (it does) .
It was a wonderful summer .

Ooh, 1976! That was an amazing summer!
I was taking my A-levels, so had a lot of time off school for home study. That was the year I became hooked on watching Wimbledon! Back in the days of Borg and Connors (before McEnroe came along!).

My abiding memories are:
Ladybirds! Millions of them everywhere!
Saving the washing-up water to water the garden.
Endless long, hot days.
Being utterly mesmerised by watching Nadia Comeneci at the Olympics (so many faultless performances).
The college summer ball.
Getting engaged to DH.

Yup, Buxton cricket ground 1june ( I thought it was31 May but think you're right) blazing heat, 2 June snow stopped play.

1974 was tubular bells iirc, and 75 Lord of the Harvest. The Who.