Feest Isolation Days – 18 September
The weather has turned again. Our glorious Indian Summer days have vanished. Sweaters have been pulled on in order to have our cuppas outside with our friends as we socialise in the garden. Where did the Indian Summer days go? And where did they come from? Not meteorologically, but etymologically. It would seem that these bright summer like days that occur between September and November (maybe we’ll have another spell!) are called Indian, not after the Colonial rule in India, but were named first by the American Indians on the East coast of the States in the 1700’s. The first instance of the term used by an author is found in St. John de Crevecoeur’s work of 1778. The Frenchman wrote:
Sometimes the rain is followed by an interval of calm and warmth which is called the Indian Summer; its characteristics are a tranquil atmosphere and general smokiness.
In England in the late 1860s these warm spells were known as All Hallowed summer or Old Wives’ summer. Those names didn’t become common parlance though. The Met Office first published a meteorological glossary in 1916, and defined an Indian Summer as ‘a warm, calm spell of weather occurring in autumn, especially in October and November”. We were fortunate to have one in September!
We certainly made the most of it! As we headed out of Bristol to meet a friend and have a walk, we picked up a hitchhiker. We didn’t even have to stop the car, he/she just hopped on board. Now I had no idea about the difference between a cricket and a grasshopper, but I reckoned our hitcher was a cricket. It had large antennae and that indicates cricket. There are 11 species of Grasshoppers and 23 of crickets in the UK. Both of these insects are among the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects. They hatch from eggs into nymphs and undergo five different moults until they become adults. If you hear them in the daytime they are most likely grasshoppers as they are diurnal and crickets are crepuslcular. Yes, I had to look that one up, too. Those who studied Latin will no doubt not have bothered as they would have known it meant twilight. As our little friend was with us in the morning I’m guessing now not cricket but grasshopper!
The journey was short, he/she hopped off at the roundabout, only a few miles down the road. Hope he/she got back home all right!
When we got back home it was a different sort of cricket.
That the Australians won.
Stay safe, have a good weekend and see you again next week!
With love
Kathy x