Yes. People did look like this in the 70s.
The stiflingly unpleasant heat today [I can cope with 38C/100.4F temperatures if the sun is out and the air is moving, but it's been overcast and humid-as-hell - even the thunderstorm just now fizzled out after barely dampening the leaves in the garden] takes us back - as all heatwaves in this normally moist island inevitably do - to the great Summer of 1976.
And so, appropriately, we have a mini-timeslip-moment...
In July forty-three years ago, apart from melting pavements and stand-pipes in the streets (London had fifteen days over 80F, and five consecutive days over 90F), there was also in the news: the raid on Entebbe airport, Nadia Comăneci's seven "perfect 10s" at the Montreal Olympics (and our own gold-medal-winning swimmer David Wilkie in his skimpies setting many a teen-queen's loins-a-tingle), the first photos from Mars taken by the Viking 1 lander, the murder by the IRA of British ambassador to the Irish Republic Christopher Ewart-Biggs, an earthquake in China that killed 242,769 people, three British (and one American) mercenaries shot by firing squad in Angola, and the US Bicentennial celebrations. In our cinemas: The Omen, Bugsy Malone. On telly: The Bionic Woman, The Sky at Night and the Olympics.
And what of our charts that memorable high summer - this week in 1976? The Top 3 remained firmly in place - Elton & Kiki at #1, Dr Hook at #2 and Demis Roussos at #3. Also present and correct were The Manhattans, Tavares, Candi Staton, Dorothy Moore, Jonathan King (masquerading as 100 Ton and a Feather), David Dundas and Queen. But just outside the Top Ten, waiting its turn, was this one [here, in a very strange set indeed]...
It's supposed to be cooler tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
