Chapter 2

1976
Unless you were born then or got married, won the pools or lost your virginity, 1976 was the year of the great drought. It didn’t rain for 6 weeks with hosepipe bans, forest fires and the continual wish for the feel of cool refreshing rain. When it did rain people ran out with a wild joy of abandon experiencing the cool sweet embrace of a long departed friend or ever dreamed of tax refund.
For a 10 year old Joseph Thomas 1976 was the year of the leg break and the big drought. Being under 10 both events just merged into each other and the noise of the wider world being just background noise was blocked out at that instant by the excruciating pain and enveloping shock as he sat on the rough woodland track with his bike somewhere in the brambles, stinging nettles and brambles. There was a lot of blood and when he tried to stand, well he just couldn’t. 
The doctor at Gloucester A&E confirmed it was a leg break and our young rider spent the rest of the summer with his leg in a plaster cast, being fussed over by his granny before heading back to London at the end of the summer, annoyed and frustrated at having a wasted holiday, cooped up either in doors or sitting outside in his granny’s garden. She was lovely and sweet but she didn’t have a TV and the couple of annuals she did have he’d read a hundred times. What she did have on a daily basis though was the Citizen, the local daily paper. So short of anything else to do Joseph become an expert on who’d died recently, who’d been to court and for what, what was on TV that he couldn’t see and which local kids had grown the biggest sunflowers.
Still Joseph recovered. His cast was taken off and at the same time it finally rained and just like Granny Wilson and the rest of Joseph’s family, who rejoiced when he could finally walk and do stuff for himself, the country rejoiced when it rained. The world was back to normal except not quite, Joseph who used to be the best runner in his class now wasn’t, in fact he was now one of the slowest. The world had subtly changed, yes everyone carried on as normal but the world had changed, history had happened. What was a long hot summer became the great drought.  Life rolled on……….
Arthur looked the paper and really did think what the fuck. The Daily Express, August 1976! Either it was the kids messing him about or a local neighbour trying to freak him out. Joyce Lindsey or Ray bloody Palmer, that’s who it would be. They’d had a bit of a session at Joyces late summer BBQ, or should it be know as the late autumn or pre winter BBQ. Anyhow Life on Mars had been the main topic of discussion and before he wasn’t able to remember any more both Joyce, Ray and Jo had become slightly obsessive on the subject, what’s pergatotory? Well its like 1976 said Jo, its like the Great Drought. No reply. A pause and then “Do you remember the great storm of 1987 when my house fell down said Ray…..” and so it carried on.  No one else at the BBQ said anything, they’d all buggered off two hours ago. 
“You promised. No I don’t, Yes you did. You said you had 5 days leave to take before the end of March and you’d decorate the front bedroom.” Urrrggggg!!! “You’re  right I suppose” he said. “Bet your ass I’m right” she said.
While Angela Thomas was right that Jo had agreed to do the decorating job, the fact remained that he wasn’t overly keen. While Mrs T generally did most of the householdy repairs and things Mr T could decorate, it just took him a while to get motivated and organised. Yes he could do a passable decorating job, was good at coving and alright at painting, frustrated at papering and was ok ish at pretty much everything else apart from electrics, and really hopeless at plastering and even more hopeless at polyfillering. Still he just felt something wasn;t quite right about this job, with some bad feeling nagging away at him,
“You could always come with me on the year seven’s trip to Disneyland Paris. Frank (Mr Smith)’s cat has just had kittens so he’s dropped out.’ Arthur felt suddenly swamped with a cold chill and with a rising feeling of panic grabbed for the only escape route he could see “I’m kind of thinking” said Arthur, “that this job really needs to be done and actually I’m looking looking forward to it”……..  while silently thinking we don’t need another cat in the house (please give me strength) and there’s no way I’m going on that school trip. Angela smiled cheekily as she wasn’t really fussed about him helping out on the trip. She’d already got him lined up to help at the school Christmas fair and charity litter pick up. Also Frank had agreed to let her have two of the kittens……