That wouldn't have been 1976, would it? The year of the legendary hot summer and drought, followed by an extremely wet September (just as the Labour government had appointed a Minister for Drought...)

I was piqued into looking up the statistics for that summer and I've just discovered that the 36.0° we had in Bude on July 18 this year was hotter than any temperature recorded in 1976!

Apologies if I've aged you too much... Mrs Steve and I were teaching in the East End in 1976, and there were quite a few afternoon school closures that summer because of the heat. The hottest spell of all was from late June into the first half of July. I fondly remember many a long balmy evening supping lager outside the Angel in Rotherhithe...

We got married at the end of that year, just before Christmas, on one of the wettest, gloomiest, darkest days imaginable, and I had a dreadful cold. As we're still together I suppose you could have said then that the only way was up!