Fifty Years Ago: Thursday, 5 August 1976
I had a bath—a shallow one, only a few inches deep. This was the summer when people shared bathwater and treated every drop as if it might be the last to come out of the tap.
I wore shorts.
I put a length of hosepipe into the bath and siphoned the little soapy water into the garden. It took ages to empty, but I was surprised by how much I could water with it. The roses and hostas received most of it. Plants that would normally have been soaked were now being kept alive with somebody else’s dirty bathwater.
I cut the lawn afterwards, which seems contradictory. The grass was dry, but it still had to be kept tidy.
I was sawing branches off an overgrown buckthorn or hawthorn behind the dog kennel, trying to stop it from falling down, when Dad turned up.
He took no interest. This was still the family home he and Mum had designed and moved us into in 1966, but he had already moved on from it. The tree, the kennel, the lawn and the drought were no longer his concern.
My brother and sister eventually went off with him to stay at Appleby. I stayed behind.
I had to persuade myself to go to swimming training in Newcastle. Training was hard work and the rewards were difficult to see. Personal fitness was not much of a prize when you were fourteen and tired before you began.
Only Caroline, one of the Crowdie girls, was in my group.
We did a kick set. My legs were weak and I fell behind
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