The last time I can remember having a summer like the one still in progress was, I think, in 1976.

That was the year I did my A-levels, and the year when I went on to be an undergraduate in Southampton.

It was a long, very hot, very dry summer of the sort we have now endured, although back then no one was worrying much about climate change or the damage it might cause.

This came up in a conversation I had yesterday, and I provided a little anecdote from that same year.

During my first 10-week term in Southampton, from late September to early December 1976, it rained every day, as I recall. In retrospect, the best purchase I made that term was not a copy of Keynes' General Theory, which I still have. Instead, it was an umbrella. I used that umbrella constantly on my journey from my hall of residence to the campus, and it was much more useful and necessary at the time.

I am not forecasting a very wet autumn. I am just relating an experience, coupled with a note of caution.

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