MODERN FAMILY
PACKED beaches, empty rivers, queuing for water, sharing baths or even camels walking across the cracked surface of an empty Monmouthshire reservoir!
Not quite summer 2021, these are some memories from the long hot summer of 1976.
I was very young at the time, so my memories were as hazy as the sun that shone down, but that doesn’t stop me knowing that it was hot, very hot, and very dry.
Vague memories of going to a natural spring near our farmhouse to collect water in saucepans, cans and any other container we could get our hands on and the multi-coloured string curtain that fluttered on the open front door come to mind.
But it doesn’t matter if you remember it or not, that summer has become so embedded in the national psyche that the minute the weather turns nice you can almost hear people murmuring “remember what it was like in ’76?” on the gentle breeze.
With temperatures this week hitting record highs, the favourite place mentioned was in my homeland of Northern Ireland when the temperature hit a scorching 31.2C in the brilliantly named Ballywatticock.
But it was different in 1976, when the heatwave led to the hottest summer average temperature in the UK since records began.
At the same time the country suffered a severe drought, and it was one of the driest, sunniest and warmest summers of the 20th century.
The effect on domestic water supplies led to the passing of a Drought Act by Parliament, and there was even a Minister for Drought appointed.
Not that I am saying that is going to happen this year, but as a weatherobsessed Brit I love hearing the stories.
Then, heavily pregnant with her second child and with a toddler to run after during those summer months, my mum still breaks out in a sweat when it is mentioned.
My mother-in-law, who had two sons under the age of two at the time, always remembers that the terry nappies would dry within minutes of her putting them on the line.
Will we be telling our grandchildren about the summer of 2021, when the Met Office issued its first-ever extreme warning and people were tempted to sleep in their paddling pools?
Or will the the latest projections of future UK climate change be right when they suggest that these summer temperatures could be ‘normal’ by the 2050s?
While it is right to look back and learn from the stories of the past, it is now more important than ever to look forward and realise the dangers climate change will present to our future generations.