‘Is it true – what Shelley writes me that poor John Keats died at Rome of the Quarterly Review?’ [Letter from Byron to John Murray, 26 April 1821]

I find liking poetry more difficult than I used to. What a confession!

It’s a trouble-making question.

I think of them as dragon-flies, some of the fastest flying insects in the world.

Or so, allegedly, said Oscar Wilde. As snow gusts past my window, so does the flurry of tasks for this morning.

Someone in the Post Office (where I was spending a small fortune posting boxes and packets of pamphlets) referred to this lovely 'Indian Summer' -- that term we use to describe a period of warmth and sunshine, after 'summer' is officially over. It's been gorgeous this week, though in Scotland, this morning, it has given way to thick grey cloud again. Why Indian? I thought I'd look it up.

Immediately I discovered it wasn't a 'true' Indian summer this last week. True Indian summer has to be after the first proper frost, so we're talking October or November. And anyway, the term 'Indian' summer only began to be widely used in the UK, according to Wikipedia, in the twentieth century, when American influence became more potent than European, the 'Indian' deriving from Native American references.