I never thought of my grandparents as anything other than ancient. And by today’s standards, they were – not just because of their advanced years but also because that’s the way they were. Young people in the accepted sense of the phrase, just hadn’t been invented.

My maternal grandmother, a French polisher by trade, was 67 when I was born and had already been a widow for a dozen years. She was stooped and frail, wore her white hair in a net, hobbled around in special built-up shoes, spent her holiday in Blackpool at Christmas and was a regular at the local Darby & Joan.

And that was about the sum of my knowledge of her, though she did recall the celebrations when the siege Mafeking was relieved during the Boer War. She lived down the road from us in Moston and, with my mother at work as a machinist in the rag trade, I used to go there from school at lunchtime and share a pie from the corner-shop baker’s. And at Whit week she’d slide a shiny half crown into the pocket of my new coat.

I remember my paternal grandfather, whom I saw much less often, as a very elderly widower (his wife, who contracted sleeping sickness after the Great War, eventually died in 1948) who never seemed to get out of his favourite chair and was perpetually shrouded in a fug of pipe smoke.

The idea that I could ever engage in activities with either of them seemed then, and still does, quaint. Neither would ever have driven a car – so no good for the school run, then – or even used a telephone, so the notion of spontaneous baby-sitting cover if mum and dad received a late invitation or fancied a celebration or weekend away, was a non-starter.

How different today, and how much more rewarding for grandparents and (I hope) my little grandaughter Isabelle, now two and a half.

So first of all, let’s dump those awful old-fashioned images conjured up by those schmaltzy songs. It’s now almost 30 years since Clive Dunne’s Grandad and more than two decades since St Winfred’s There’s No-one
Quite Like Grandma and a million miles from real experience (I suspect the fact we are nanny and grandpa serves to distance ourselves from the musical treacle).

The truth is that today there is no suitable granny stereotype. People are quite commonly becoming grandparents in their early 30s at one end of the scale, and much later in life at the other, as many women with careers put off starting their families until their late 30s or even 40s. The common thread, however, is that grandparents of whatever age are much more hands-on than they ever used to be.

I got into the grandpa business relatively late – I’m not that much younger than my own ancient grandmother was when I came along. But then, you see, I am a baby-boomer and therefore, as part of the generation that claims to have invented sex, pop music, fashion and attitude will forever cling on to a notion of agelessness.

Isabelle, an irrepressible, joyous bundle of energy and fun, and I spend quite a lot of time together since I work mainly from home – and it’s all the more precious since her merciful survival of the deadliest form of meningitis just before last Christmas.

Her mum and dad both have demanding full time jobs. Isabelle goes to nursery  three times a week and my wife and I have her on a fourth day. Of course, many working mums and dads can’t afford formal childcare and in such circumstances, grandparents – especially grandmothers – play an absolutely crucial part in bringing up children for which, overwhelmingly, they seek no reward.

When we share the day there is one vital requirement. We clear the decks completely so that the time is entirely hers. This I am absolutely delighted to do, though I sometimes wonder whether such dedication isn’t driven by pangs of conscience that I didn’t have the available time to devote to my own children in such a way.

I did read that children cared for by grandparents tend to be less well behaved than those who regularly attend day nurseries. Maybe that’s true, though we do try to keep her interested in all sorts of things rather than sit her down in front of a television – much as she loves Disney’s Tinkerbell.

The magic comes from discovering just how smart small children can be. On trips to Tesco, Isabelle’s built-in sat-nav directs us straight to the pick ‘n’ mix at the olive counter (yes, you read that correctly, olives at two).

Her few early words have now turned into a garrulous torrent which gives my wife and I no end of entertainment. We cannot wait to introduce the enchantment of reading storybooks and the magic of numbers to that eager little mind.

Isabelle is a girly little girl; she much prefers frocks to jeans, loves to rummage though my wife’s bag of lipsticks and plays endlessly with the doll’s house I built for her. But, after riding behind a steam locomotive on a Devon heritage railway, she freaks out at the chance of seeing a choo-choo. Hence rising at 7am on four consecutive Fridays during the summer so she could watch the steam-hauled Scarborough Flyer roar through Cheadle Hulme station before nursery.

We’ve shared holidays in Wales, the south west and Portugal and enjoyed every minute. While we are still here, we will always be there for her.

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