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I was due to goto a wedding on Bank Holiday weekend.Due to the long hot spell, I had bought a lightweight dress for the occasion. Needless to say, when the day arrived, so did the rain.It poured all day and all my efforts were marred by having to wear a mac for the photos.

I was living in Germany at the time and I vividly remember the open air lidos being so crowded but so much fun

My Long Standing Memory is of me and my Mother in the Garden she had come home from work ( a very Hard Worker ) I Had Cooked a small lunch to sit and enjoy in the Garden. We had a poodle called Ricky who just as my Mother was going to put a Sausage in her Mouth he jumped up and snatched it off her fork, We laughed so much. Sadly she died a few years later when i was 18. i still often think of it whenever we have a lovely sunny day.

April 1st 1976, (I kid you not), I began a 9 month contract with the water authority. I had to collect data of water flow in cress beds and the depth in wells for the end of a 5 year project. I spent the summer dressed in sun hat, bikini top, jeans and wellie boots and the winter in over sized wet weather gear (they provided a small man's suit). I looked a right sight for those 9 months. Some wells were in out of the way places but I was let off going into one field where a bull was kept. I don't think that well ever got read!

We'd just moved into a derelict cottage with no mod cons except a water pipe outside, and my sister-in-law (who had broken her leg) and her then boyfriend came to stay for a weekend. What always sticks in my memory is her squatting on a bucket spending a penny with her plaster leg in the air, followed by a trip to the water pipe to clean her teeth.

I was married in July and had planned to use flowers from the garden for my bouquet. However, there were no flowers and the grass was brown so I ended up covering a white Sunday Missal in my wedding dress material and pinning the one white rose which was in the garden onto the book.
Another disaster was the 3 tier wedding cake. In the morning we had arranged the cake on the table in the reception hall and it looked fine, but by the time we arrived after the wedding it had collapsed!

I was doing my A levels - the heat in the examination rooms was unbearable!

Working for Severn Trent Water Authority in Leicester and having to run the gauntlet when the hosepipe ban was brought in as my neighbours appeared to think I was personally responsible for the ban. I could not visit my local shops or pub due to the abuse that I would receive. I have never been so glad when it started to rain so I could go out of the house in daylight again without having to be smuggled out!

My beautiful daughter was born in January 1976. She was born with a mop of black curls and had her grandfather's olive skin and gorgeous blue eyes. She spent much of that wonderful summer on a blanket in the shade of an old willow tree in our cottage garden. She looked so delicious in her shocking pink angel top! I remember that we were advised, as it was so hot,to give her sips of bottled water as the nitrates in the soil has entered the drinking water in our rural area and could be dangerous to babies.

My second daughter was born at the end of April 1976 and my most memories of that hot summer relate to her as a small baby in the heat. She had to go in a big cot as a plastic sided carrycot was just too hot. And that she spent the whole summer wearing only a vest as all the pretty cardis, dresses etc. were too much. By the time the weather changed she had grown out of them!

swimming in the sea in England, sun and ladybird swarms

I remember buying a fresh chicken to cook for tea but by the time i got it home it had gone off because of the heat!

Worked within walking distance of mum's house so dashed over there twice a week in my lunch hour. Straight into the shower after work. Never been so warm.

We got married that year, and my husband and his dad were building our house.

Travelling to and from work in Hackney, London.
I was a teacher and I always seemed to be hot. The classroom windows were painted stuck too.

I remember aged 10 sitting under a tree with my sister eating ice lollies to try to cool down and because of a drought having to help my mum carry buckets of water into the house from a communal water pipe in the street.

I remember the hot days and the frustration of not being able to swim in sea, because the warmer weather had enticed Portuguese man of war jelly fish and sharks to swim close to the coast where I lived

Well we had moved to South Africa...for good weather!! ?lol

I remember the heatwave of 1976 very clearly. I was training as a nurse in London, and we were allowed to discard our starched aprons on the ward which was such a relief, uniform rules were very strict so this was a real surprise.
We were also provided with cold drinks whilst on duty, these were in big jugs with ice on the long tables on the ward. We were so excited you would have thought that we had been given champagne !!

My thoughts went back to the look on my younger daughters face - 2 at the time - when rain eventually fell. It was full of awe and astonishment as she looked skyward. We were at the local shops at the time and a passer by grinned at her and said "This is called rain"
I also remember the local family,who had an early version of solar panels, making the press because they'd been driven out of their home by the heat to live in the garden.

We went to Bournemouth beach and could only get a place on the sand at the back as there were so many people. My small daughter said, " I thought we were going to the seaside Mum." As she couldn't see the sea through all the people.

My lawn was completely brown, I used a stick of rock as a support for my daughter's carousel birthday cake and it bent over in the heat. We had the paddling pool out all the time.

I can remember sunbathing in the long grass in the back garden of our rented flat in London then travelling to work in central London on in tube.

I remember spending all my time in a bathing suit and only wanting to eat ice cream!

My son Matthew was 15 months old that summer. He had blond hair and a pale skin, and I worried a lot about him. Then he went out in the sun, and within a few days had a lovely brown tan with no trouble at all.
We stayed for a while with my mother that summer. She had a house with a big back garden and a drive which led round the side. The children were told they could play in the back, but not go round to the road. Matthew had a toy he called 'pushy bells'. a noise-making roller device on a stick which went everywhere with him. He never did figure out how someone always came out the front door and caught him before he could get all the way up the drive and escape :-)