Two things were inescapable in the long hot summer of 1976 - the energy-sapping heat and that twee Number One by Elton John and Kiki Dee - Don't Go Breaking My Heart - blaring from every radio.
I was 17, and prone to four-hour football matches down the park - standing over an allotment tap for water to cascade down my throat - no plastic bottles of Evian and the like then. I remember the grime of labouring in a hot factory and the perfume of honeysuckle on summer nights spent idling with mates and girls, sneaking an under-age pint or two of thirst-quenching Midlands bitter, or cold but awful Harp lager.
But while I basked with the rest of the country in an atypical British six months, a national crisis developed. A minister for drought had to be appointed, and, as reservoirs dried out, gardeners were banned from using hosepipes. Meanwhile The Bellamy Brothers, folk rockers who were so soft they made The Eagles look like Hells Angels, chirped "Let Your Love Flow Like a Mountain Stream".
