General Chat

I can remember the white containers at the end of the road, we used to take it in turns to fetch the water on our homemade 'go-karts' :)) Burnt the soles of my feet too :( Heather x

Hi Cherry i remmbered we went to Brighton on holiday,went to the Bluebell railway and the asdhes from the funnel started all the fiels smoldering and on the way back we had to keep stopping so they could put the fires out

I gave birth to my daughter in the July. 'Take a deep breath' I was instructed 'Where from?' I yelled 'There's no ******* air!' LOL I used to wander round most of the night trying to find somewhere cool to lay me and my lump and often slept on the living room floor. One really good thing was that when you hung a line of washing out (including nappies from my almost 2 year old son) by the time you got to the end of the line, the stuff at the beginning was dry! I spent many an afternoon sitting in my son's paddling pool and by the end of the evening when my feets were like balloons, I'd sit, much to the amusement of the elderly gentleman next door, on the back yard, in my nightie, with my feet in a bucket of water.LOL Mags xx

Gave birth to my first child at the end of August. I stayed indoors most of the time, to scared to sit outside in case she hatched out. Would never wish that experience on my worst enemy. Although I did enjoy looking out the bedroom window night after night when we had such a lot of thunderstorms in the small hours. Jenny.

I hit the golf ball a very long way. The ground was so hard it just ran and ran. Happy days

Living near Blackpool, we weren't really affected by the drought, but I remember going on holiday to Italy in August and the weather back home was warmer. My father died in June and he was really struggling to breath with the heat. It must have been terrible not to have water. June xx

I wasn't even thought about yet in 1976! But i remember in the winter of 1995 the pipes were frozen were we lived and the council came around and gave each house a sort of plastic tank/bottle of water which we had to make do with that week, needless to say we were all desperate for baths. Debbie (born 1979)

lol thanks for pointing that out Trish, I've corrected it :o)

Having my son... but we in Chester did not have such restrictions because we get our water supplied from the River Dee. We were some of the lucky ones. Anne:)))

Hi Blue, it was at Cross in Hand, dated from 1790. When a coaching inn it was known as Belle Vue, I think because from the house there was a glorious view over the valleys to the sea at Eastbourne 17 miles away. It was last used as an inn round about 1905 and then it was renamed Chillington by the village Doctor who moved there.

I can remember the Bath With A Friend campaign....can't remember much else apart from feeling extremely hot and uncomfortable. Little did I know then, that it was to be the norm later in life when I move to the Middle East!!!!!

I lived in a Nurses home, so we had bath restricitons and only 2 or 3' of water! Still had to wear our heavy uniforms, thick aprons and belts, with dark tights and lace up shoes. Then late August it was decreed we could wear sandals and leave our belts off, I think the weather broke a few days later! I went on holiday to the Lakes district July and watched Derwentwater recede by the day, the road from the camp site (no pathway) to Keswick was tarmac and everyday I walked it my Scholls stuck and it was squelch squelch!! They still held the fells race and participants were running up the fells in that heat, apparently the only casualties were people watching!

We were living on the Isle of Wight in 1976 Our garage had to be rebuilt and the the garden had graters that you could loose a child in, as the soil was mainly clay in our garden, i did'n dare let the children out there to play. Ann

I forgot about the kids' chickenpox Karen and Paul, there must have been a lot of it about! Mine sat in the paddling pool and I danced attendance on them with supplies of ice cubes, lol

Paul, have you washed your hands and now can't do a thing with them? LOL - shickenpox !

Having a bath with 2 or 3 inches of water in it

I can't remember, as I was 6 :o) I do remember however that I got a bad case of chickenpox that summer, right in the middle of the heatwave.

Ahhhhhhh yes showering with a friend lol that was fun Sxx

I was six and had chicken pox so spent all my time in the paddling pool trying not to itch ! :-)

Fred’s got a thread running about water restrictions and it set me thinking back to the 1976 drought. At the time we lived in an old coaching inn on the Sussex Weald. We were fortunate in having two wells, one which took all the stormwater and had a hand pump and the other an artesian well, so deep that I was frightened to utilize it in case one of the kiddies fell in! There were 5 adults in the house and 2 children. We bathed the children first, topped up the water and then it was the adults turn. When we were all done we siphoned the water into the stormwater well so it could be used for watering the vegetables. The washing machine’s water was recycled too and for the whole of that summer we didn’t use the dishwasher. As we were at the top of a hill we were the last to get water from the mains supply and when we did it was usually a murky brown with sandstone deposits so we filtered it through kitchen paper before use. I can still remember the mantra “Pee with a pal and poo at your peril” and there was a breeze block in the cistern, phew indeed! Thirty years later I’m wondering to myself whether I could cope with all that palava now! Cherryx