BEFORE DECEMBER

NOVEMBER STRUGGLES

Falling for Autumn: Or is it St Martin's Summer?

Reality check: is this an Indian Summer? - Polly Curtis in today's "The Guardian" online

I reckon many of us have been debating this. Is this or isn't it what we used to call an "Indian Summer"?


The UK Meteorological Office has slapped our wrists several times in recent days.


We can't call this an Indian Summer they say.


Indian Summers can't happen in September, we learned to our surprise. They have to occur after the first frosts near the end of October or early November.

 This, in spite of having spent our lives in blissful ignorance of the fact we needed permission to celebrate an autumn warm spell in whatever way we chose, under whatever name, whenever we noticed it. After all, surely it's the public's own words and traditions that put any concept into the culture in the first place? This delightful phenomenon was called an Indian Summer long before the Met Office, or the Governments who fund it, had us in a headlock over semantics!

The Guardian's Polly Curtis in the article linked above, quotes one of the earliest uses of the term, from Frenchman John de Crevecoeur, in 1778: 

'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. Up to this epoch the approaches of winter are doubtful; it arrives about the middle of November, although snows and brief freezes often occur long before that date.'

It's been suggested the phrase is rather a disparaging reference to Native Americans perpetrated by the incoming European settlers, who branded the native dwellers as untrustworthy for breaking "treaties" with the invaders of their territories. Hence the unseasonal warm spell was deemed to be similarly breaking the settled pattern of the weather getting colder as the winter solstice approached.

 I, for one, wouldn't be comfortable to use any term, whether deemed "non-PC" or not that could cause offence to those with a reason to feel aggrieved by certain loaded phrases. But it seems far from clear that this is the origin of the name for this meteorological phenomenon. The jury seems to be out. Or not to have realised they had been convened.


Wikipedia confidently states here:

Depending on latitude and elevation, the phenomenon can occur in the Northern Hemisphere between late September and mid November. 


In many ways, the Wiki is the modern voice of popular cultural understanding, for all its limitations. So late September doesn't seem disqualified here! Wherever the Met Office has arbitrarily decided to draw a line in the sand.

Hoar Frost - St. Martin's Summer (Indian Summer) by British painter Alfred Sisley 1874 (Oil on Canvas. Private Collection)

Here in England, an autumnal warm snap was formerly called a "St Martin's Summer", until gradually by the 20th century, along with "OK" and  unfamiliar spellings and pronunciations of the English language picked up from GIs and Hollywood talkies, the phrase "Indian Summer" overtook older traditional expressions.

Looking at the numerous different names for the phenomenon from round the globe shows there's a huge collection of terms we can choose from. Some maybe less than flattering, many just sublime:

Little Summer of the Quince, Old Ladies' Summer, Summer of Old Ladies, Crone's Summer (non-PC for self-respecting modern women!), Gypsy Summer, Gypsy Christmas, St Theresa's Summer, All Hallown Summer, Return of Summer, Flashback of Summer, or the Chinese phrase meaning "a tiger in autumn", humankind has always wanted to speak about it and celebrate it!

Whatever it should be called, it's a joy when it happens, in my book. Because it's here, it's hot, it's glorious! Beautiful soft, golden days, melting frigid  dawns and evenings after the tilt of the autumnal equinox. Lighting up the dying leaves and showing off their twilight splendour. Giving us hope that it's not so very long, after all, till spring.

NaNoWriMo 2010

Link to the National Novel Writing Month "NaNoWriMo" Site
So that's November pretty much planned then!

American writer Catherine Drinker Bowen wrote:

"Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind."
(c) Catherine Drinker Bowen, Atlantic, Dec 1957.
  
National Novel Writing Month, that now runs each November as a challenge and inspiration to produce that elusive book you have in you but never have time to complete, gives an opportunity to dust the mirror off and plunge into your story.

I want to redream dreams so others can taste them. I want to show the world as an amazing, precious place and help people see through shallow waters to the rich radiance of possibilities beneath the surface.

I always have several ideas for books simmering on the back burner in the file labelled "Procrastination Station"! Most people do, even those who don't write! At the moment I have a few stories inspired by episodes and characters in my own family history explorations over the years just waiting for the space to find a voice.

NaNoWriMo strips away excuses. People worldwide are doing what you are, many for the first time.

NaNoWriMo shreds self-editing and self-censorship (until December, at least!). You write every day of November until your 175 page novel with its 50,000 words is complete.

Exhilarating! Terrifying!

Now I just have to get well enough to sit up at the laptop for long enough most days next month to complete word count goals.

I just need enough freedom from the brainfog of my mangled immune system to put down all those strands of dialogue, action, plot and emotional tension without burning myself up and out.

Short stories and poems can be tackled in bite sized pieces. These past years of illness have been made more bearable because this is the case on my better days.


A novel is just bite sized pearls woven onto a thread of gold and dusted with an overarching rainbow of paced purpose and closure.

At the very least, the challenge of NaNoWriMo is kissing a big smacker of permission my way. I intend to try and pucker up.