I remember the heat wave of 1976 and everyone was having barbecues that year.
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To celebrate the publication of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, a charming coming-of-age debut novel by Joanna Cannon, we're giving you the chance to win a Kindle Paperwhite.
Mrs Creasy is missing and The Avenue is alive with whispers. The neighbours blame the disappearance on the heatwave, but ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly aren't so sure.
As the summer shimmers endlessly on, the girls decide to start their own investigation. And as the cul-de-sac starts giving up its secrets, the amateur detectives find more than they imagined.
Joanna Cannon graduated from Leicester Medical School and worked as a hospital doctor, before specialising in psychiatry. She lives in the Peak District with her family and her dog.
To be in with a chance of winning a Kindle Paperwhite worth over £100 & a copy of the book, tell us - do you remember the heatwave of '76? If so, what are your memories of it?
Post your entry below by midday Monday 13 February.
Usual T&Cs apply.
This discussion is sponsored by HarperCollins
I remember the heat wave of 1976 and everyone was having barbecues that year.
Being a nursery nurse and having all the activities for the children outside for weeks and weeks. I have photos from then.I think we thought it would last forever and every summer would be like that from then on - if only!
Thinking that I would love it, as I always felt the cold - wrong! Being on a residential course & getting a heat rash for the only time in my life. Coming home, going for a country walk & being bitten by every malevolent insect in the county, deciding heat wasn't so lovely after all!
Swarms of ladybirds on southern seafront,they were floating on the sea and I remember jumping on the trampolines and all the ladybirds in the air. I was 10 years old.
sitting under a woollen blanket in the garden trying too keep cool and my then neighbour trying to reason with me that that wouldn't work, I needed to get in the shade. I was 8 and couldn't see her reasoning.
My mum and sister contracted chicken pox. They were really suffering with the heat. I had to look after them and run the household whilst doing my GCEs. It was the hardest summer of my life.
The year after we were married. We lived in a maisonette with no garden. So hot!
That was the year we got married and watched our house being built. From the foundations being laid to the roof being tiled there wasn't one drop of rain. The 'garden' was rock hard and we had to live with cracked earth from when we moved in, in June until well into the autumn. Our wedding day at the end of June was boiling hot - the reception was in a marquee in my parents' back garden and we had to roll the sides of the marquee up in the evening to try to get some fresh air into it. The florist was a bit of a drama queen - he spent the whole day spraying the flowers to stop them wilting. We went to Austria for our honeymoon and enjoyed the rain we had every afternoon. We came back from honeymoon to more hot weather - my new husband had flu. We had parked my car at the airport and left it with a minimal amount of fuel. We had, however, left a fuel can in the boot with a gallon of petrol in it. My husband opened the fuel can to top up the car tank, and because it was very hot, it 'exploded' all over him covering him in petrol. A very smelly drive home!
Yes vividly ...we had just moved into a new home on a council estate with no garden as such (we hated that as were used to the quiet countryside and outside room to sit)
My welder husband hurt himself at work something had burnt a small area of his foot..He started to get poorly.
I couldn't get past the receptionist on the phone so couldn't get a doctor to come out the 6 miles..
He was so bad the next day I did get a doctor to come out who diagnosed blood poisoning.. He was off work weeks and had to have his doctor out then on a regular basis...it was so nasty.
Added to that the heat outside and noise from the neighbours and being in bed was extremely uncomfortable for him... What really annoyed him too was the fact that we had just taken delivery of our first colour TV and he couldn't get downstairs to watch it!!!!!!
We moved soon after into our own home but I will never forget that challenging summer of 1976
No I don't remember the heatwave summer of 1976. How nice would it be if we had another one this yea though?
Husband had started work in the Middle East and thought the heatwave would be good practise for when I joined him in Jeddah!
I can't forget 1976 - I went to Weymouth with a friend on holiday and there was a plague of Ladybirds! Together with the heat it was very weird but memorable....
I had just left school and it felt like the summer would last forever
We had just moved out of London to our first house. It was such a luxury to have a garden to chill out in.
I had just started nursing and the wards were so hot. We were all staying in hospital accomodation and we're lucky enough to have a pool in the grounds so there was always a lot of pool parties. Just remember it was so much fun
Yes I remember it well. I feel asleep while Sun Bathing and was so badly burnt I had to visit the Doctors
I was a teenager so spent the summer posing at the local "lido" or wandering around in a huge floral sunhat thinking I looked amazing. When I look at the photos now I still think I looked amazing, just not in a good way!
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Holiday in a caravan in Abersoch with boyfriend ( Now husband ), The sand was too hot to walk on , we had to buy flip-flops.
My memories of the '76 heatwave are of my husband and me mixing tons of sand and cement by hand as we could'nt afford to hire a mixer, ready to fill a hexagon paving slab mould as we had just moved into our own house which had a massive back garden and with a young family to bring up as you can imagine money was a bit tight. All of that free sunshine helped dry out our lovely paving slabs to perfection and just over 40 yrs and many granchrildren later we still have those same paving stones showing off as a beautiful feature in our front garden now
I used my bathwater to water my vegetables and I had the best crop of Marrows I have ever had. I had so many, I was able to sell some to friends for 10p and top up my children's money boxes. It was hot!
I lived in rural Staffordshire and was pregnant with my younger daughter who was born on 28th June. I spent a lot of time sitting in the garden in a sleeveless smock top and stretchy shorts so went into hospital looking as if I'd been holidaying somewhere far sunnier than the UK usually is in May and June. My husband was a teacher and we had a 30ft yacht moored at Wells-next-the-sea in Norfolk so spent the holidays there enjoying the rest of that amazing summer with nappies festooning the rigging.
I lived in the heart of the Notting Hill carnival area. Whilst out sightseeing on August Bank Holiday Sunday riots started, it was like a war zone! We ran home to find Injured police officers strewn on the front lawn of the estate where I lived. Other officers were charging the rioters using only shop window manequins to shield themselves. A frightening end to a wonderfully hot summer!
Days up the Scottish hills, nights in the caravan and my sixteenth birthday barbeque in the middle of nowhere by a burn. Brilliant!
I was 16 and working at the local, very busy bakery all that Summer and i just remember the shop being stifling hot and running down the hill to the river at 5.30 to paddle and cool off and buy an ice cream...those were the days.
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