So how was it for you? The recent spell of glorious weather, I mean. Myself, I lapped up every sun-drenched minute, my enjoyment — pedant that I am — only slightly impaired by being continually told by the media that we were experiencing an ‘Indian summer’.

Now, as with the British system of titles, Indian summers are things you either know about or don’t.

If you are in the former camp, you are likely to tell anyone who listens that Indian summers cannot occur in late September/early October. To accord with the definitions supplied by every dictionary I possess, bar one, they must be in late autumn. The adjectives ‘warm’, ‘dry’ and ‘calm’ are used by most of these authorities; the various Oxford dictionaries use ‘hazy’ too. Only Collins differs, defining an Indian summer as “a period of unusually settled warm weather after the end of summer proper”. This accords with what most people think is an Indian summer, so by the bizarre rules of lexicography it has to be right.

Perhaps my greatest pleasure last weekend was bowling down the A34 on Saturday lunchtime, car roof down, listening to Pick of the Pops on the radio. The first chart we heard was from September 1967, at the close of ‘The Summer of Love’.

I can’t pretend I enjoyed listening to Traffic’s Hole in my Shoe, not a patch (no pun intended) on their Paper Sun of a few weeks before. But it was great to hear the record that launched Radio 1 — The Move’s Flowers in the Rain — being placed on the turntable by Tony Blackburn once again.

One disappointment came as Tony announced the No 4 hit, Keith West’s Excerpt from a Teenage Opera — and then didn’t play it. This highly tuneful ditty shared with Hole in my Shoe a section featuring a bawling brat — actually brats — a fashion of the time.

All together now: “Grocer Jack, Grocer Jack, is it true what mummy said, you won’t come back?”

Actually, on this occasion mummy was right.