This spell of weather reminds me of what I fondly believe were the summers of my childhood. Endless days of sun and blue skies, when I disappeared for hours on my bike with my brother and friends. We cycled to places miles away from Rochdale where I lived, just for the heck of it. We even cycled the 40 or 50 miles to Blackpool, spent the day there and then cycled home.

I can’t believe I was ever fit enough to do that, but I did, I can assure you. I cannot imagine that any sane parent would encourage a teenager to do a journey like that now. It is a far less cycle friendly world that we hurtle about in today.

But is my memory of those long, hot, carefree summers a correct one, I wonder? Have I airbrushed out the rainy, dull days of my youth to hanker after a fictitious past where everyone was polite, people drove considerately along leafy lanes and the car breakdown men saluted their members, when everyone tolerated each other.

I remember the tarmac on the road bubbling in the heat; we used to pop the bubbles to release that sweet tarry smell that is one of the many aromas that instantly drag me back to my childhood, along with the intertwined smell of horses and bread, butter and milk.

For many years our milkman delivered those items daily in a horse drawn cart and that wonderful hay scented breath that horses have always makes me hanker for fresh bread and jam, which was our regular teatime treat in the summer.

But then nostalgia is a dangerous thing. The ringtone on my phone is the signature tune of Housewives’ Choice, a record request show that was broadcast every morning on the Light Programme, which I listened to regularly with my mother. But hankering for the past that my post-war generation enjoyed is pointless, as there will probably never be such carefree days again, when our parents’ generation was taking a deep breath and starting to live again, free of the horror of a world war. We, in our blithe innocence thought that it had always been like that and would always continue to be like that. We really did have the best of times, so perhaps the weather really was that good too.

Now, of course, I’m already moaning about the heat.