Your memories of 1976?

[rover 623gsi]

I was 10. It was brilliant. Endless hot sunny days playing out in the streets or down the park. All the parks had paddling pools and water fountains so that’s how we kept cool.

There were ladybirds everywhere, stag beetles and flying ants too. No air conditioning anywhere. Tarmac melted.

Getting sunburnt was a rite of passage and mum would slap calamine lotion on us afterwards - which both stung and stank. We drank lots of very thick orange squash and occasionally as a treat we'd get R Whites Lemonade or Cresta Cream Soda.

My eldest brother bought a moped - Yamaha fs1e - and all the kids in the estate used to hang round at ours and he’d charge them 5p for a pillion ride round the block.

Happy days.

Edited by rover 623gsi on Sunday 17th July 08:28

Edited by rover 623gsi on Monday 18th July 23:01

[anonymous-user]

I was 13.

Went to school with a litre bottle of orange squash that had been frozen overnight. Made for a lovely drink/slushy at lunchtime.

Played football every lunchtime, played various games every break time.

Awesome summer!

[vixen1700]

I was 9 in the Summer of '76 and remember playing out until late as the days seemed so long for the first time.

Biggest memory was going to Mildenhall for the bi-centenial celebrations on July 4th and it being a blisteringly hot day queing to get in, sitting in my dad's Citroen GS. Also the heat watching the US fighters taking off sticks in my mind.

Saw a programme recently about '76, and it mentioned the ladybird invasion. Don't have any memory of that at all, maybe it wasn't a London thing.

[Eric Mc]

I was 18. I also made my first visit to the UK, to attend the Air Tattoo at Greenham Common.

All the grass in the south of England was brown, not green.

[Timothy Bucktu]

I remember vividly going to the standpipe to get water as the house supply was off. I was 4 and that's my only recollection though.

[V8covin]

Standpipe outside our house and the woods next to our estate caught fire and spread to people's gardens and all the neighbours came together to fight the fire and stop it reaching the houses......the fire brigade turned up hours later once we'd done their job for them

[ARHarh]

I was 12, and a few things stick in my mind. The 2 20 odd year old lads who lived over the back of our house helped me build a tree house so me and my mates could get some shade. Off out with friends getting far too hot on our bikes and swimming in Fleet pond. They would go mad if you did that now.

Family holiday in Dolgellau and walked up Snowden in shorts and a t-shirt. Spent a day out with the farmer who's cottage we stayed in and rounded up a lot of sheep. Bumping across the fields in the back an old Morris Minor van was fun. My dad insisting his Ford Capri could get up this dirt track and bottoming out and having to bounce it off and reverse back down the track, listening to Mum not being very happy at all.

Mainly I remember that afternoons were just a bit too hot and you ended hiding in the shade.

The day it rained and standing in the rain just enjoying it.

[DocJock]

The ground was so baked that I drove the par 4 5th on Gullane #3 course for the first and only time.

[Roofless Toothless]

ARHarh said:

I was 12, and a few things stick in my mind. The 2 20 odd year old lads who lived over the back of our house helped me build a tree house so me and my mates could get some shade. Off out with friends getting far too hot on our bikes and swimming in Fleet pond. They would go mad if you did that now.

Family holiday in Dolgellau and walked up Snowden in shorts and a t-shirt. Spent a day out with the farmer who's cottage we stayed in and rounded up a lot of sheep. Bumping across the fields in the back an old Morris Minor van was fun. My dad insisting his Ford Capri could get up this dirt track and bottoming out and having to bounce it off and reverse back down the track, listening to Mum not being very happy at all.

Mainly I remember that afternoons were just a bit too hot and you ended hiding in the shade.

The day it rained and standing in the rain just enjoying it.

I like your dad!

I remember the grass in Valentines Park in Ilford going brown, but not much about the heat. I had just come back from a year in Maracaibo where the temperature is mid thirties every day and the humidity 70%. It was the lack of rain (for England) that took my attention.

[vixen1700]

Used to go to Valentines Park a lot at that time and always got an ice-cream at the Italian place nearby.

Ilford was dead posh then.

[Roofless Toothless]

Rossi’s ?

[witteringon]

Valentines Park was bus ride away for us. Used to love the boating lake there

[oddman]

'Our' fishing pond - a local mill pond long disused - dried up

Smell of dead fish drying on the baked mud all much bigger than anything we'd caught and an unfeasibly (to my 10 year old eyes) large pike dying in what was left of the water. The pond never recovered. It's owners neglected it and it reverted to a wilderness of weeds and alders.

Plagues of ladybirds.

Dad changing his VW fastback with black vinyl seats for a Cavalier with cloth seats - no longer welded to seat - bliss

Both cars yellow - very good for attracting insects

[vixen1700]

Roofless Toothless said:

Rossi’s ?

Can't remember the name but it was the Ilford side rather than the Gant's Hill side.

It just seemed more exotic than normal ice-cream van ice-cream and the stuff you got in Bejam's.

[Roofless Toothless]

Cranbrook road.



Founded by the grandfather of Francis Rossi, of Status Quo.

[vixen1700]

Didn't know about the Francis Rossi connection. Cheers.

There was a haberdashery shop next to it that had really cool jeans patches that I'd long for.

[abzmike]

Getting sunburned on Portobello beach… endless sunny days.

[anonymous-user]

Roofless Toothless said:

Cranbrook road.



Founded by the grandfather of Francis Rossi, of Status Quo.

I had many a Knickerbocker Glory there.

The open air pool in Valentines Park was rammed all summer. Melbourne field was a brown doormat.

Learned to drive with the Wessex School of Motoring (the princely sum of £27 for 10 lessons!) MK1 Escort with vinyl seats made for a sweaty experience.

[jet_noise]

Failing end of first university year exams.

Well it was very difficult indeed to stay in and work when one has:
1st "car" - Moggie Thou van...
...for 1st disco. Great demand for one that played rock rather than disco music. I don't think I've ever got outside a pint of lager faster than after carrying the gear up two flights of stairs, sweaty!
1st flat - had been living in digs for the first two terms.
Five domestic science college ladies in flat above.
The summer in question.

Can recall being too hot just sitting in an armchair. So I moved to a dining chair instead. That's the sort of tip the government should be giving.

Then later on placement (Westinghouse Brake & Signal in Chippenham) mostly working in one of only two A/C rooms in the factory. Which was very rare in those days. Lucky or what. My boss encouraged me to do the required extra work needed to make up for that exam failure during "work" time. And helped with a bit, nice bloke

[Colonel Cupcake]

I was 8. I don't remember any standpipes in our part of West Yorkshire. I do remember the ladybirds. It was customary for us to hire a camper van and go to Cornwall for a couple of weeks. Maybe the coast was cooler but I don't remember 1976 being any hotter than any other year. It was warmer once we got back to Yorkshire though.

One thing that was evident, though, is that life just carried on. None of this clamouring for schools to be shut and people having days off.