Dad used to bring home lots of out-of-date comics, like Beano, Topper and Hotspur.

As a boy of 11, the summer of 1976 passed in a wave of heat and hazy memories of cracked earth and dust clouds. I remember spending most of the summer buried under a mountain of comics in a bright orange tent erected in our back garden. My Dad had a mate who was a newsagent and used to bring home lots of remaindered out-of-date comics like Beano, Topper and Hotspur. Also, plenty of those pocket-sized graphic novels called Commando, full of tales of derring-do from the dark days of World War II.

During the course of the summer the colour of the tent was bleached by the relentless hot sun and I remember the world looking a very odd, surreal hue when I eventually emerged from the tent in search of a cold drink or an ice cream.

We also had to contend with a friendly invasion of ladybirds, I seem to remember. They got everywhere. At first I recall Mum taking a very relaxed attitude towards them, saying something like: “Oh, they’re good for the garden. They’ll eat all the insects and bugs.” I thought this was sage advice and would result in more blackberries for me off our blackberry bushes, but as the summer wore on I think our patience with this friendly infestation grew rather thin.

Living in Kesgrave, my brother and I often went exploring on Rushmere Heath, heading out past the old water tower, round by the speedway stadium, hacking bits of chalk out of the dry banks, and then doubling back onto the golf course.

I still retain vivid memories of the almost desert-like conditions on the heath. The usually luxuriant bracken was withered and dry. In fact, much of the spikey, yellow-flowered gorse was blackened after a spate of heath fires which, my overly dramatic but probably unreliable memory is trying to suggest, threatened the houses in Blackdown Avenue and Linksfield. How an 11-year-old boy would know this I don’t know. What I do remember is being fascinated by the fact that not only was the large pond on the golf course dry but the bottom was parched and cracked by the baking sun. As we kicked around in the dust, I imagined this was what being in a desert must be like.

I also remember witnessing my first dust-devil on one of our expeditions, watching open-mouthed as a mini-whirlwind formed in front of us, picked up loads of dust and hopped across the golf course before disappearing into nothing.

I remember my brother Nick and I returning home with wild tales of what we had seen.

In those days summers seemed to last forever. Probably school loomed all too soon but I have banished all thought of that from my memory and now all that remains are comics in a tent, adventures on the heath and battling an invasion of ladybirds.