Free at last
From Mrs Pauline Grove Sir: Nicholas Coleridge's article (Where have all the grannies gone?', 3 August) caused a few laughs in our household. Only the previous day a son, resident in Tasmania, had telephoned to ask if I could fly out there in order to help him, his wife and two children move house. 'Sorry,' I replied, quite truthfully, 'we have just booked a tennis holiday in Barbados.' We have four breeding children, all of whom would welcome help, but there are few days on which I won't be found on the tennis court, while my husband is always off on a course — of the golf type. We've done our children thing, and our elderly-parent thing, and now we are free to do our own thing. Nothing against grandchildren — I would sell my soul for them — but at long last we are coming first in the list of priorities. Only too soon our shopping list will consist of stair-lifts, chairs that help you stand up, baths with little doors in them or even motorised buggies, but in the meantime these grandparents are enjoying a freedom which up to now has been denied them. Long may it last.
Pauline Grove
Headley, Hampshire
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