04/10/2008 by Ted.

Hi Richard,

Many happy returns of yesterday 3rd October.

Hope you had a wonderful birthday.

Much love and best wishes from all the family.

PS. My apologies for the delayed greeting. You would have had this greeting yesterday but that my watch, which I trust to tell me the date, still says the 3rd.  

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04/10/2008 by Andrew.

Ahem! And i thought some of Wiki’s suggestions for ‘Indian summer’ seemed far fetched, i am sure that the fly had a large bulge in his left cheek when he wrote that post……..

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04/10/2008 by Fly-on-the-wall.

It was a pleasure to be of help.

It was you dad’s idea.  He asked me to just run my eye down Andrew’s thorough and commendable instructions and summarise the basics - which I did. Took me all of a couple of minutes and I think it was well worth it if it helped someone as charming as you sound.

Ted (your dad) tells me Bryan is your husband.  Please give him my regards.

Your dad also sends his fondest love to you both.

Let me know if I can be of help again - but I am allergic to housework!.

Regards,

Fly-on-the-Wall.

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04/10/2008 by Fly-on-the-wall.

Ted is playing with his duck just now so I have a brief opportunity to respond to your “Indian Summer H..mmmmmmmm!”

Ted Googled it too but said that as no-one seemed to know where the expression came from, and as the ”Indian Summer” you were referring to only lasted one day anyway, it wasn’t really of concern.  I explained to him that you would, in any case,  be looking it up on Google and would find the inconclusive situation which you did, and I also spent some time explaining to him the true origins of the expression which I will pass on to you here.  I, of course, with my own origins have a knowledge of most, and sometimes all, things.

The expression is the result of poor literacy in early post- first - Elizabethan times.  (Not nearly as bad as in these second-Elizabethan times, though!) However. The expression Indian Summer did orginate in America and in a broad way concerns the American Indians. The Quakers’ first winter in their new country was not a happy one and they endured many privations - starvation, sickness and the like.  During these times the local native Indians helped them and were appreciated by the settlers.  Eventually things got better for the settlers and by the time another ship arrived from the mother country the following year local native Indians and settlers had become good neighbours. 

The captain of the visiting ship was required to write a log of what he found on his trip and Captain Amos Wainwright in his report described the integrated population he found with the words “They are mostly Quakers and summer indians”.  He should more accurately have written “some are Indians”. The sentence following started with the words “Weather in the new settlement is unseasonably warm and dry …”

When the Admiralty of the time received the report, the two consecutive sentences made no sense to the Admiralty clerks faced with the incorrect spelling combined with Amos Wainwright’s pen and ink writing. They therefore ”corrected” it, and associated the words “summer Indians” with the second weather sentence after adjusting the two words to read “Indians summer” which they thought more reasonable. The new sentence then read “Indian summer weather in the new settlement is unseasonably warm and dry” which passed into the English language as the definition of “Indian Summer”.

I hope this is of help.

Regards,

Fly-on-the-wall.

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