Can anyone remember 1976

I remember the summer of '76. We were living in Scotland and we kiddies (I was 5) ran around from garden to garden jumping in paddling pools, and the mums were talking all the time about how hot it was.

I thought we agreed that roasting flesh gives one animalistic tendencies, jude. I remember 1976. I watched Jimmy Carter get elected on the telly. It was the USA's bicentennial. The fireworks in July were beyond belief. Summers were always hot in New Mexico. I think that year it went up to 111 degrees F. Your description of summer, jude, was perfect, btw. Just like I like them!

I was 29 years old, so I remember it very well. Give me a few years and I might not. We had our first holiday in Cornwall in 1976. Two weeks of blistering sun. We thought it was always going to be like that in Cornwall. We've been back many times since, but never had weather like it. I even got a suntan. Visit my blog: http://whatisthisstrangeplace.blogspot.com/

I didn't think Cornwall even had a sun...

It was a ruse. Visit my blog: http://whatisthisstrangeplace.blogspot.com/

1976...Chicago...hot...

I was working in Wimbledon at the time, and the guy there had a wall mounted thermometer. I stuck it in the sun and recorded a temperature of 120f.

It's called dotage, Jude. But no-one has ever accused me of being mature. Visit my blog: http://whatisthisstrangeplace.blogspot.com/

I spent that summer in Dagenham, waiting to go to scary "big school".

I thought the hottest ever recorded was the year before last, I was living in a tin caravan and remember seeing it through the steam on the news.

1976 was the summer before going up to Senior School where we’d been told Mr Williams hung First Years out of windows. I remember sleeping with both doors and all the windows open and running along hot pavements in bare feet to Lucinda’s house (because THEY had a chest freezer with ice creams in it!) I remember the neighbours drinking beer in each others gardens after work and aunty Betty from over the road doing a handstand against our patio doors even though she was wearing a dress. I also remember sitting on our front wall, drawing with chalk and waiting for the Corona man to return to his lorry so we could go and buy lemonade. He always parked outside aunty Betty’s house. We always waited ages.

I was living in New York City in the summer of 1976. I recall walking by some large hotel on the West Side. Jimmy Carter was leaving the hotel, having just won the Democratic nomination at the convention there. A guy was walking along the sidewalk reading a newspaper, oblivious to the crowds and the Secret Service guys yelling at him to stop. Then two burly guys charged the paper reader with fists raised and guns at the ready. Our news junkie finally woke up and ran into the street. Fortunately, the traffic had already been re-routed, so he wasn't hit, either by a car or the Secret Service guys. It was such a typical NYC moment I just stood there laughing. Carter walked past, beaming that big shit-eating smile of his, got into the car and drove off.

it was the long summer before big school for me too haven't got any big memories, probably spent a lot of it outside, wandering around the countryside just outside Bath, scrumping, playing cricket in Alice Park, playing british bull dogs in larkhall playing fields, swimming at the lido in bath....

We had our first house - built in 980 AD or thereabouts - in Devon. A fine little thatched cottage in Coleford just north of Crediton. The side wall fell away with the subsidence caused by the heat. It was the facing wall in our bedroom. We woke up one morning with a gaping gap where the corner used to be. Just put in a length of iron with crosses on each end, heated it up and it contracted and pulled the wall back in. It's called a tie-bar. Brilliant. they don't build 'em like they used to.

I agree with Ely that 2003 recorded the highest temps. I was pinned to the floor at the time in France (42 deg plus for three weeks) and remember reading the British press about London breaking 100F for the first time ever. In fact, I'm so convinced Ely is corect I'm going to google for evidence: There, from the met office, scroll down towards the end of the page and you'll see 38C being busted. http://www.met-office.gov.uk/climate/uk/interesting/aug03maxtemps.html However, 1976 was probably the longest and driest in recent decades. I was 19 and working during the summer before going off to what you young things call Uni. I was supposed to be a trainee setting out engineer working on building the QE2 Hospital in Kings Lynn but all I can recall is long lunchtimes in the pub and falling asleep in the mortuary to be (after games of crazy cricket in the hospital corridors that involved pieces of 4x4, bricks and hardhats). We never got caught because Management were equally asleep/farting about in the offices. I reckon in the three months I was there, the project fell beind 6 weeks... hrm, maybe I should be posting this anonymously. I remember the asphalt on the plant room roofs melting - as did lots of tarmac'd roads! Ah yes, that reminds me, one guy did get caught... he was as white as a sheet before lunch and, having fallen alseep in some remote but sun-exposed location on site, was redder than the reddest lobster you have ever seen by 4PM. He claimed he had been working without a shirt on but his back was still white. Cue barber's pole jokes.

I was 'made' in the summer of 76... so I do remember it in a kind of 'this is a sofa in Redhill and I exist!' kind of way.

Was 76 the summer that the ladybirds invaded? I remember being on the beach at Hunstanton as this huge swarm of insects approached like the plague of locusts, covering everything and everyone and my mum screaming because my sister, who was asleep in her pram had them crawling into her nose and ears. I seem to remember being told several years later that it had happened because it was so hot and there had been a massive increase in the number of greenfly...is that true?

The great Norfolk ladybird plague was indeed 1976. Me, I was four and went to visit the primary school I was heading for at the end of the summer. All the cars had leatherette seats which were too hot to sit on. My Scottish family, transplanted down south, were going on and on about A Hundred Degrees and I was sure that probably had something to do with the Three Degrees who my mum sang with. My 76-year-old granny apparently lost a stone through dehydration. Mostly I recall being bored silly with endless day after day of being in the garden and too hot, whilst being told not to stay inside because look at what braw weather this is. Yes, the same weather they were all complaining about. ---- John H

Ah...so then my memory does work, I wonder why it is that I can't remember a passage I read out of Gender and Power less than two minutes ago!

I was newly married ( I know I don't look old enough, it was an arranged marriage ) We had a boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads. I still had hair, and a waistline.