Summer of 1976

I was about 17, worked in an office, was slim, nice-looking, and my friend and I used to sunbathe on the park at lunchtime, attracting admiring glances from young men. Happy days.

We went on holiday to Wales and it rained, story of my life.

My son was born at the beginning of June 1976. It was so hot. At 11 days old I took him to the baby clinic pushing his gorgeous forest green coach built pram. The name escapes me. As it was so hot I took him dressed in only his vest and a pair of shorts over his nappy.

I was so embarrassed. All the other babies were in beautiful little outfits,acute socks. Our name was called and up I went to have baby weighed. The nurse called for quiet.
Attention...she said.... Please look here at baby CG. This is how you should all be thinking, baby's comfort should come before fancy clothes.
I was a happy mummy.

acute socks = cute socks

Long story but I’ll never forget 1976. We lived in a small bungalow, double glazed and insulated to the eyeballs. We had a two yr old and I got meningo-encephalitis so I was hospitalised, it was so hot and I had to lie flat following a lumbar puncture! They were convinced I had Lassa Fever (do you remember that)? So I was barrier nursed and my door had to be closed.

I signed myself out in the end as I was desperate to come home. My mum came down to look after our child and me and we had to sleep with both front door and back door open to get any air through! The lumbar puncture gave me such dizziness and headache that we had to freeze facecloths in turn to put on my forehead where they melted immediately. Eventually, I managed a couple of steps before back inside to lie down then graduated to 20-30 steps to the park, having to lie down on a bench and then a dash back home. So I can’t say I enjoyed one minute of that summer! The whole process of recovery took weeks and then I got pregnant immediately. Our son wasn’t a well child and people subsequently said they never thought we’d raise him! He’s now a strapping strong man but still has weak teeth, I think due to my being under par when I was having him.

We got married in 1976. We had a hot day on April 10th. Unheard of in those days, quite usual.now. A wonderful day. The weather was a harbinger of what was to come.

We drove down to Devon for a week at Bigbury-on-sea. On the way down, we drove through, I think, Modbury, and there was a cottage painted completely black, and written in white paint on the walls it said that it was a punishment for illegal use of water in a heatwave. I`d be interested to know if anyone from Devon saw the house.

I took my O'levels in 1976 and 10 CC's 'I'm not In Love' topped the charts.

Oh the happiest memories for me . I was born in 1962 so I was 14 in 1976. Happy carefree times . Wearing cut off jeans , playing in a waterfall, listening to the best music soundtrack ever .

Only 4 years later I was a single mother.

I well remember 1976. I was 20 and now husband was 21. He had secretly saved up money for us to go on holiday to Spain, first time abroad so very exciting. Lloret de Mar, posh at the time......... or so we thought as two cockneys, on an aeroplane and everything! We came back and everyone was more tanned than us. However, we had a great time and great memories,

Yes I remember it It was the year I left my marriage with three small children some toys Some clothes a set of saucepans and the goldfish

Remember it well particullarly the plague of ladybirds when we were on holiday at Scarborough

I don’t remember that summer’s heat but all summers were the same for us. We lived in a deprived traditional area which was stuck in the 1930s.
We had children who turned 2 and 4 and 6 that summer.and apart from school and shopping we went nowhere. No car, no television, no telephone, far from family, not much money.
Our neighbours objected when the children played naked in the paddling pool.
I wasn’t unhappy, the children were everything to me, but I resented our very restrictive life.

My husband often quotes 'The hottest summer in living memory' which was said on the top 20 radio programme before they played Elton John & Kiki Dee's Don't Go Breaking My Heart

We lived at the seaside back then - I remember the ladybird plague as my youngest son was 2 and terrified of them. There was also a plague of greenfly a couple of years later - they covered everything yellow. I was taking driving lessons at the time and the cars were all caked in the things!

Yes remember it well. We set up a series of pipes so that the bath water was piped out, over the roof of the outhouse and onto the vegetable patch.

It looked like that Mousetrap game. Worked though.

I was 28 and mum to two daughters of 5 and 3 and as I have no memories of 1976 I am about to go and find my diary for that year and get back to you with my memories!

DH and I got engaged in July 1976 so I remember it well. We had a party to celebrate and the hit record of that time was Candi Staton “Youngs Hearts Run Free”. ?

Coolgran love your story ?

I was teaching in London and had a 2 hour commute - a bus, and 3 trains.
I used to get home and strip off in the garden to catch the last of the rays. Not completely of course

I was newly pregnant with dd1, but it didn’t feel over-hot to me since we were visiting that summer from the Gulf, where high summer temps could often hit 50 deg, and there were frequent power cuts, so that even the noisy wallbanger aircon units in our little tin-roofed prefab didn’t work. We were so often living in ovens, both indoors and out.

We really did notice the lack of lovely green back in the U.K. though.

I was in my second year of training to be a nursery nurse and part of the training was to spend a month working in the maternity ward of a local hospital in Manchester.

We had to wear full uniform, including tights, and I remember being in agony due to having been very badly sunburnt on my days off.

I was pregnant with my first son that year, i remember my poor feet swelling so much i couldnt get my shoes on properly. I also remember when the rain came, everyone in our street stood outside cheering and laughing and getting wet!!! Happy days.

I remember the ladybirds-they used to bounce off you as you walked through clouds of them. My niece was 2y, and got bitten by one; she was most indignant!

I was nineteen and living in Southampton. I worked in a quality control lab which had an entire wall of unshaded glass - it was AWFUL. Thankfully I was not too far from the beaches of south Hampshire. I left that job to go to university and had planned a fortnight's holiday starting the last Sunday in August. And of course, that's when the weather broke.

I’d just finished my 3rd year of teacher training. My boyfriend (now my husband) and I went to Jersey on a camping holiday. One afternoon it was so hot the back windscreen of our car exploded! We travelled all the way back to Staffordshire with bin bags taped over the hole! Didn’t get stopped by the police until we arrived back in Uttoxeter!