It’s 1976 and some of us aren’t even born yet. Dr Pockless and I are eating 6p portions of chips on the promenade at Filey, with our feet cooling in the boating pond and no idea where our parents are. I am five years old and still cute. Elton John and Kiki Dee are just about to top the charts with Don’t Go Breaking My Heart and the Montreal Olympics have just started, but we kids are unaware of that. All we know about is sand between our toes and losing all our pocket money in the slot machines.

As Graybo mentions, there is a water shortage, so like in medieval times, let’s drink beer instead, and never mind the garden. There can’t be such a thing as a hosepipe ban because they weren’t invented until 1991, and if all else fails we can pour the czech lager on the lawn. In some cases this is likely to happen anyway.

We have filled a large paddling pool for anyone who wants to cool their feet, and added some grass clippings, mainly for Gordon but also for everyone who has ever been a kid in a paddling pool. And mainly a couple of dead bees as well, to make it spicy, and one on the outside for Lisa to step on. Enjoy your consolation drink, Sir; you could probably use it as suncream. Lisa is our first Pimms claimant of the day; luckily we have another paddling pool right here, free of grass clippings, and full of Pimms and lemonade. And then there’s a third paddling pool full of champagne, especially for Lyle, big enough for Lori‘s boat trip.

Several of the young ‘uns claim not to have been born in 1976 (others don’t admit to it at all, not wanting to give too much away about their ages). Clair can have a whippersnapper, and Pixeldiva can have some sympathy to pass on to her mum, from one who had a baby in the heatwave of 2006 and knows just how miserable it probably was.

Anna‘s cocktail sounds delicious, and her antisocial teenage summer rings a few bells as well. I skulked in our damp haunted house that didn’t warm up even on the hottest days, listening to obscure music and writing angsty fiction. She challenges you today to come up with suitable music for marriage proposal and rejection; so after you’ve had your drink, please head on over there to do that. Talking of obscurity and music, Vaughan. That is all.

Ms Gammidgy va en France avec beaucoup des enfants et (j’espere) beaucoup beaucoup du vin. Je serai tellement etonnee si non. Bon vacances! [n.b. accents are Lyle’s department].

The prize for the most active summer memories goes to the star of next week’s interview, and your host for next week’s cocktails (which may be served at International Cocktail Time for the pleasure of our friends over the water), Asta. Asta will be choosing her own theme and dishing out her own insults: enjoy.

In fact it is far too hot to be insulting today. I don’t think I have really been rude to anyone yet. Some Fridays I worry that I may have been a tad too rude, so today I should remind you that you are all lovely and it’s so nice to have you here for cocktails every week, and I really can’t be bothered to think up imaginative insults in this weather. Very happy that it’s not 42°C, which sounds deeply uncivilised, not to mention unhealthy. Please take care in the heat, Mark and other americans.

And in the continued absence of Sevitz, it is up to Mike to bring down the tone of the afternoon by conjuring up mildly disturbing thoughts of being on heat in the heat. Somebody please turn the hose on him.