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 9.

1976 was the summer of my dreams. I love the heat.

HOT
Millions of ladybirds. And ladybird 'pee'.
Having to get up at 4am to exercise the horses. I was NINE, and in charge of schooling my mother's fucking crazy TB until he was listening enough for her to deign to get on. He didn't like 4am starts. Neither did I.
The ponies' coats going really light in the sun.
Drought.
Crispy grass.
Fucking haynets in summer. No grazing.
The ground cracking.
Living in pretty much just knickers.
Sticking to the pavements as they melted in the heat.
Hosepipe bans
Not being allowed to flush the loo.
Tiny, tiny, shared shallow baths.
Having to water the vegetables with grey water
Seeing dead moles in the garden.
Our huge, not quite a lake drying up. Cross ducks. Dead frogs.
Dead fish. My Dad was pissed because he'd just restocked.
Myxomatosis, lots of dead and dying rabbits.
Really very fucking HOT. Bliss.

We lived up North then, so didn't have rationed water, but when we visited my aunt in Camberly, we were only allowed 1 inch of water in the bath. No one had showers then. 5 kids had to share the water, but taking turns, my aunt was very proper like that. We even had to sit at the table to eat our breakfast, which she cooked! I still love fried bread and tomato sauce. We called it Spotty Dick. Years later when I heard someone having custard on their spotted dick I felt a bit sick.

My mum decided to make her own sun cream, we spent the next few days covered in calamine lotion - which did not help one bit!

Shuggy boats on the sands at Whitley Bay.

The ladybirds that did bite.

I was 9 nearly 10, I thought I was so mature in my cut away blue swimming costume.

They did bite, didn't they? I thought I was remembering wrong.

We went to Ireland on holiday that summer and it was lovely and green. I was 8 and remember starting a new school in the autumn, they still had all the signs up about not wasting water but there were no plugs in the loo basins for when you washed your hands.

Stratters - but did they actually get washed up in waves on beaches or is that a product of my imagination??

And was Midge Ure in Silk??

I swear these things haven't crossed my mind in 30 years. I feel among friends!

Slik not silk! - though he probably wasn't averse to a bit of silk

I can't remember that kit, we didn't really go to the beach. But I do remember swarms of hoverflies

I had a summer job working in Dayvilles ice cream parlour. It was open till 11pm , loads of pissed customers, packed all night! Then after work climbing over the wall of the public swimming pool with a big group of friends and swimming at midnight. How lucky that nobody drowned.

Yes, Midge Ure was in Slik.

I was 5 and in Reception. We got rationed water in little cups, bu I mostly remember getting locked in a toilet cubicle and the teacher having to climb in to get me.

Our DSs were 4 and 5 and we had a wonderful holiday on Anglesey in a rented cottage with a beautiful beach directly outside. There were lots of little paths leading to neolithic remains, with small stone bridges where we played Billy Goats Gruff with DH as the troll.
Back home, DH claimed it was hot enough to fry an egg on the paving stones in the garden. Totally unsuccessful but the DSs were delighted at his attempt. Still mentioned today as one of dad's dafter ideas.

I wasn't yet alive in 1976 (born 81) but it seems to me like we never have nice summers any more.

I remember the summer after I finished school (1999) was nice but ever since we've just had the odd day or so of warm sun. This summer has been really disapppointing. I'd love a heat wave.

I graduated in 1976. Finished exams at the end of May and had four weeks (on a proper student grant) to enjoy with my friends before we finally left. Lots of parties, trips out (was in Exeter) and fun. Relentlessly hot.
By the time of the graduation ceremony all the grass had died and it was becoming rather grey and dusty.
I started my first proper job on the 1st September and the weather had turned and the next 12 months were very wet.

We were practicing for a very important dance performance and out teacher told us to come to rehearsal in our swimming costumes so we did!!
Sunburnt shoulders so bad they blistered after days spent at the local pool with a dry sarnie and a bottle of boiling hot orange squash

Just looked at the weather for the next few days!
It's fucking grim.

I remember it well. I loved every minute of it, but felt guilty because people around me had the rough side of it.

I was 18 and living in a village in dairy farming country. I remember the clear blue skies and lovely lovely heat every single day, waking up and seeing blue skies out of the window and loving it

Cycling from my village to the town to see my friends in complete assurance it would stay sunny all the way.

Going inside because we were fed up with sunbathing and sun

But I also remember my friends houses with no water and standpipes in the streets and the awkwardness of using anyone's loos. Our water stayed on because we were a farming village, friends were so jealous.

never ever throwing water down the sink but using bowls and taking the water outside to throw on the veg patch (everyone had a veg patch)

the cows in the dry parched brown fields, lowing because they were hungry with no grass left to eat, and all huddled under the trees for shade.

farming friends looking worried

I remember watching a small cloud far off in the sky, and gawping at it as it sailed across the clear blue skies.

One day there was a brief thunderstorm, and we all rushed outside and stood in the rain for 3 minutes like something off the telly. I can remember the smell of that too, wet rain on hard hot baked earth.

Sitting in a friend's house and seeing shadows across the window, then looking out and realising the local heathland was on fire and wondering how they were going to put it out with no water

Being sad when it started raining again.

I took my o levels in a boiling hot exam hall, went on a post exam celebration holiday, cracked my head open and spent a few weeks in a coma. Woke up to have someone read me my exam results and spent most of the rest of the year on the settee. My parents even splashed out for a TV, because I couldn't read books.

I think my summer was probably better for me than the rest of my family, who'd been told I wouldn't wake up.

Dayvilles ice cream was such a treat the bubblegum, peach and mint choc chip were my favourites

I was born in 1987 but our local park had a 'due to the drought/heatwave be careful of cracks in the grass', there was a massive medow and you could break a leg running through there!

I was six. We had two weeks at Camber Sands and the beach was so hot you couldn't walk barefoot. Back home, the tarmac had just been laid around the new build estate and it was sticky all summer. That was the summer to judge all summers by - no wonder we're disgruntled every year now!

I was 18 in 1976, left school, applied to teacher training colleges.

Cheesecloth blouses and shirts, maxi skirts in Indian cotton, love beads.

My mum not having any rheumatic pain for the weeks of the drought.

My first serious boyfriend.

Going to see Jesus Christ Superstar in London and how hot it was there, no ice available for drinks in the pub.

The brown, dead grass everywhere.

Having an 'all over wash' at the basin instead of having a bath, to save water.

Can anyone remember any music hits from that summer? My faves were:

Jeans On -David Dundas
Young Hears Run Free-Candi Staton
Show Me the Way-Peter Frampton.

Don't Go Breaking My Heart was no 1 for aaages.

I think Dancing Queen came out later in year.

Nazareth - Love Hurts! Ohh! - his voice was dreamy

I used to buy a publication called Words (or Song Words, or something). Contained all the words to all the songs in the Hit Parade. 9p every month, I seem to remember. Had to budget, as that was a large portion of my pocket money (actually, thinking about it, that must have been before 1976, as I had a part-time job in 1976 so would have been able to afford it more readily. I collected them for years, wish I still had them now

Why can't I remember the ladybird plague, I wonder?

(They were probably biting because they were thirsty and cross). Can only remember the thousands and thousands of ants.

I remember Neil Diamond being played over and over again