Summertime, when the livin' was easy ...

Remember when summer meant endless blue days, melting tar on empty roads, sandshoes and freedom? But was it really that hot, asks JENNIFER LITTLE.

Here we are then, midway through another summer. But so far it's been more autumnal winds alternating with fresh spring showers and flash floods.

We hanker for golden summers the way we remember them. That blissful, Utopian season of natural light and warmth that evokes and illuminates the sweetest of our childhood memories. The golden weather that seems as if it will never end ...

Summertime - blue skies, sea breeze, foaming waves, bare feet, salty, tanned skin, rock pools to explore, endless balmy evenings, barbecues grilling, ice cream chilling, cicadas trilling, freedom with a capital F to pursue pleasure with a capital P ...

Weather aside, is there such a thing as the classic, quintessential Kiwi summer? What are the elements that endure and what has changed in the past 20, 30, 40 years? Does summer return us to those simple jandal-wearing, hokey pokey ice cream licking, fish'n'chips-on-the-beach, trannie with the cricket blaring days?

Youngsters today might be shocked to learn that not so long ago, people flocked to the beach - without sunscreen - and basked innocently in searing ultraviolet rays, not minding if their skin turned red then blistered and peeled before it tanned.

Julie Biuso, celebrity chef and food writer, says one of her best summer memories of the '60s was the ritual of sunbathing. The aim was to "get brown" because white skin was regarded as unhealthy and undesirable. She remembers sprawling in the sun with a bunch of girlfriends to relax, read and chat.

"There was a sort of intimacy to it," she says. "I loved the feeling of the sun getting into my bones, whether I was lying on the beach or the prickly kikuyu grass ... it made me feel so rejuvenated."

These days it's not just our changed relationship with the sun that has radically altered our experience of summer, but the way we eat, work, socialise, spend money and organise time.

Not only were there no sunscreens, cellphones, salmonella scares or rioting, drunken youths, but New Zealand was once, unbelievably, "a world without Coca-Cola, a world without takeaways," recalls West Coast beach devotee, author and Waitakere mayor Bob Harvey, who spent his boyhood summers in the heart and heat of Auckland City during the 1950s.

"There was no one on the streets because everyone stopped work. The shops were all closed and nothing was open in the weekend. It was a special treat in summer being allowed to run barefoot on the hot, black, tarsealed streets of Karangahape Rd and Symonds St," says Harvey, sustained in those days by drinking Wai Wai lemonade and eating Gaytime scooped ice cream.

Families didn't even have refrigerators, he recalls. Meat was stored in a food safe. Every week a man delivered a huge chunk of ice to help to keep perishables cool.

"You could buy fish and chips but these were eaten at home at the table," as, still clinging to English traditions, meals were formal, regular and ritualised. New Zealanders were still light years away from outdoor eating with more Asian and Mediterranean influence. Hey, you couldn't even get coffee. There was just gooey chicory essence.

Those inner-city streets may still have the same hot tarseal, but in modern times they are overrun with diesel-belching four-wheel drives and much more traffic. Everything is open - especially cafes and restaurants that serve food and drinks with names and ingredients unheard of two decades ago.

People still stop work but often for shorter periods. And, depending on the job, they are likely to carry cellphones for urgent work-related, after-hours calls when they are on holiday.

The advent of the cellphone has changed the distinction between when one is working and not working. Thus, the notion of summer as a time for getting away from it all to a motel, bach, caravan or tent on a remote beach has been undermined by the presence of that gadget with its intrusive rings.

Like most Kiwi kids of his time, young Bob did get to swim in the sea. On his beloved Raleigh 20 bike he pedalled to swimming pools, or went to Pt Chevalier by tram, or Mission Bay and Orakei, despite the dramatic pollution at these urban beaches.

"At 4 pm every day, raw sewage was pumped out into the harbour," he says.

"Clouds of seagulls" clamoured above it, and swimmers dutifully left the water. Children occasionally died from typhoid contracted from bathing in filthy sea water.

"No one thought it was terrible. The sea was there to be used for waste disposal."

Now people are more aware of pollution, with local bodies and environmental lobby groups keeping us informed. A familiar sight on any Auckland city beach in the summer is the helicopter that hovers low to take water samples for testing. You can dial an 0800 number for the results.

The sea was the centre of summertime activity for life in the coastal provinces, too.

Richard Wolfe, writer of children's and Kiwi-culture books, recalls blissful days on the black sands of New Plymouth beaches where the Tasman Sea waves roll in.

"It was all about simple, primitive pleasures," he says of growing up in Taranaki during the '50s and '60s.

"Going to the beach with a bunch of friends, lying on the hot sand after a swim, talking. Maybe someone had a transistor radio now and then.

"We didn't need anything else - just a few pence for a TT2 at the end of the day."

For those born post-TT2, the aforementioned wasn't a relative of DDT, it was what's now called an iceblock.

Some reckon the old inconveniences of limited shopping hours and range of goods had a charm of its own. Biuso tells of the fun she and a group of friends and siblings had during the '80s when planning summer holiday meals for their annual sojourn to Mangawhai.

Knowing they couldn't buy many of the ingredients they needed - apart from fresh fruit and vegetables from roadside stalls - meant they paid special attention to menu planning.

"Now there is no distinction between the city and most holiday venues - you can buy everything anywhere," she says. "Part of being away is to feel rejuvenated and refreshed. There are two sides to the coin. It's more convenient now but there's less of a change in being away."

Most folk still drool at the sight of a plate of fresh corn on the cob - a summertime classic - but these days they might go into paroxysm of guilt and indecision about whether to smear it with real butter or the low-fat, salt-free, goody-goody substitute, Biuso notes.

An advocate of the real thing, she believes children once had a more naturally balanced diet - eggs, full-cream milk and butter included - because there were no snack foods or takeaways.

Life was less pressured (apart from the compulsion to burn and tan), with less marital breakdown, less consumerism, less sophistication, says Wolfe.

You put on your sandshoes (Nike, Adidas and logo-ism in general hadn't arrived), and whizzed down to the beach on your bike, which you leaned - without a lock - against a fence, knowing it would still be there when you returned, he says.

"Nat King Cole's Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer summed up for me the feeling of the 1950s and '60s," concludes Wolfe.

F OR others, such as Roger McLay, the Commissioner for Children, who grew up south of Auckland, summer meant special treats like going to visit relatives in town, and catching a tram to see a movie or to go shopping.

"At home, we got on bikes and pedalled down gravel roads to get to the beach or the school pool."

Sliding down grassy slopes on nikau palm fronds, raiding a neighbour's orchard and playing frisbee with dried cow pats were summer holiday antics for the young McLay in the '50s.

Repeatedly grazed knees and hands were par for the course. It was a world without the fear and caution we live by today, a world without safety helmets and seat belts, without the rules, regulations and warnings that govern most leisure activities.

On the social side, he says, "life was simple, families had more time, communities were stronger naturally and therefore safer. One thing that has changed is the closeness of communities. We saw a lot of other families via local clubs like table tennis and roller skating.

"Nowadays there is more choice of things to do. People will drive further. There are more cars everywhere.

"I think the choice of things for kids to do is wider, but I'm not sure the sense of satisfaction is any greater," he says, wistfully.

While Biuso and Wolfe both suspect summer just seemed longer, hotter, more wonderful when seen through childhood eyes, Harvey says he doesn't have "a dreamy, romantic view" because "we were only recently over the Korean War, with the threat of nuclear war looming".

But he relished "the closeness of the family unit and relative safety.

"No one got murdered. The worst kind of tragedy was children drowning."

The beach is undoubtedly still our ultimate summer sanctuary ... if we ever get there once we've found a carpark, locked the car with the electronic alarm system, lugged bags filled with sunblock (toddlers', water resistant, extra-moisturising etc), sunhats, sensible, Velcro-fastened sandals, beach umbrella or tent-like shelter, roll-out mats to lie on, chilled, pump-action, mineral-water bottles, panini sandwiches, boogie boards, flutter boards, inflatable arm bands, blockbuster paperback, newspaper filled with advertisements for sales of barbecues and beach gear you don't have ... never mind. The beach is still free.