ABERGAVENNY and the surrounding area became hotter than Satan’s sauna last weekend as, like a bulldog sucking on a lollipop, the natives relished their first taste of high-summer.

The sun was roasting, flesh was cooking, the streets were swarming, the blood was boiling, spirits were high, tempers were frayed, fish were jumping, or at least swimming, and the living was easy.

Yet in such damnable heat, any respite is short-lived. A soul can only take refuge in so many pints of cold lager before the devil comes to collect his due. And sooner or later a person has to leave their watery frolic and fun in the broad majestic Usk and face another day in the dark satanic mills of commerce, industry, and education.

When, with a collective groan, the nation of Abergavenny braced itself for the horrors of another working week on Monday, it staggered into the hard-boiled depression of the nine-to-five grind with all the gusto of a beaten dog who knows it’s going on a long car trip in a hot car with no ventilation.

As weary and resentful as an overworked army of ants we made our way to the office, to the factory, to the hospital, to the shop, to the cafe, to the school, to the building site, to the call centre, to our fates and to our confinement.

After a solid weekend of infernal merriment, the Great British public began to do what we always do when confronted with more than 24 hours of solid gold sunshine, bookmarked by the anti-climax of the working day, we began to grizzle.

To compound matters, some hellish imp decided to turn the temperature up even higher on Monday and Tuesday.

Like bears with sore heads, longing for the sanctuary and shelter of a shady cave to crawl into, we were prodded with the big stick of capitalism and told to get back to work and make some money.

And as we sweated out all hope and a weekend’s worth of binge drinking and barbecues through our poor pores, we wondered could any hell be more real, harrowing, or hot than now?

Well, yes! The summer of 1976 for starters. It was no picnic in the park, but a proper scorcher all the same. It was the hottest and driest summer for centuries.

The sun was so fierce and unforgiving that year, local rumours suggest that a gentlemen from the Avenue Road area temporarily lost leave of his senses and even contemplated committing the cardinal sin of not wearing socks with his sandals.

Thankfully he soon regained his senses and order was restored, but elsewhere in Wales things, as they are prone to do in the Sun, went a bit wacky.

In 1976 Monmouthshire’s Wentwood reservoir dried up completely, and a trio of camels from Longleat Safari Park were snapped trekking through it. Why? We may never know.

What we do know is there was a lot of other reservoirs drying up quicker than a slug in a salt factory.

In the first week of July the Chronicle announced that the Usk was at its lowest level in 50 years.

And under a bold headline exclaiming, ‘Sun Brings Death and Problems’, there was a report on how the rush to relax and cool off in the area’s rivers had led to two fatalities.

The article went onto document a number of other problems being caused by the heat.

Apparently a paving stone in the Mardy had exploded due to perpetual exposure to direct sunlight, and ice creams and cold drinks were in constant short supply.

Drivers were complaining about burned hands every time they touched their steering wheels and allegedly one of the hottest places in Abergavenny was the market hall with its glass roof and one of the coolest was St Mary’s Church.

Elsewhere, Abergavenny residents were furious and fuming about the short opening times of Bailey Park’s open air swimming pool.

An enthusiastic swimmer barked that it was absolutely ridiculous in this extremely hot weather that the pool only opened in the afternoons from 3.30pm until 6pm.

Just imagine the muddle they’d find themselves in nowadays without a communal puddle to wallow in.

Due to the perpetual heat and abnormally low rainfall, water was rationed that summer.

A spokesperson for Abergavenny’s Chocolate factory explained at the time, “I think we shall probably be able to scrape by.”

The Angel Hotel caused a stink, quite literally, when it warned its guests not to have baths first thing in the morning and to fill up the wash basins in their bedrooms.

The Hen and Chickens revealed it was coping with the cuts but warned, “If we have a big function things could get tricky quite fast.”

Meanwhile back on the farm, the sons of the soil were facing one of the worst disasters in living memory.

Because of the absence of lush green grass, farmers were already feeding animals on winter stocks of hay.

To make a bad situation worse, towards the end of August, Bailey Park pool was closed to the public more than a week before the official end of season.

The reason? A 1000 gallons an hour leak caused a severe loss of water which could not be replaced in a time of such critical water shortage. The water left in the pool was used for the scrubbing down of Abergavenny Market.

After the drought, the flood.

In early September the heatwave came to an end with one of the wettest weekends in memory.

Roads were turned into rivers and waters cascading down the mountainsides brought with it hundreds of tons of shale and rock.

On Llanelly Hill and in Crickhowell, families were forced to flee their homes when embankments gave way and water came “like a wall” into their gardens and through their houses.

The Head of the Valleys Road was also closed due to flooding. And as and day after day of dispiriting downpour continued to fall unchecked, the Summer of 76 faded into a memory as hazy and ill-defined as a distant ship on the horizon.

So remember folks! It may be hot out there but it never lasts. Stay safe and make hay while the sun shines. Because as proof and pudding always proves - it always ends in storms!