When we were all younger, I wrote about my three sons. In the words of Sir Thomas More, their characteristics strangely tugged at my heart, and like More, I fed them cake, ripe apples and fancy pears. Among other things.
But eventually there was a mild rebellion about the writing, in the course of which my eldest threatened to send me a bill. Now I write about my grandchildren, three boys and a girl, who are too young as yet to be so commercially minded.
Years ago friends used to assume that I was simply pining to become a grandmother. I wasn't. 'Why do I need more people to worry about?' was my cry, having learned the hard lesson that fear is an integral part of parenthood. (But of course I certainly didn't want to send the grandchildren back once they had arrived.)
I was mindful then of Francis Bacon's notion that children increase the cares of life, but now that I am older I agree with his added idea that children also mitigate the remembrance of death, for it seems a wonder that I am now witnessing the growth of another generation.
A fortunate life, I think, falls in-between generations. I have had a fortunate life, and in a particular sense, a very long one, for it takes in 130 years: my eldest grandparent was born in 1886, and my youngest grandchild is only three weeks old. I can remember my three grandparents well, even now.
And the grandfather who predeceased me also had a presence, thanks to the continued efforts, via photographs and reminiscences, of his widow, who felt we descendants had missed out in not knowing him. I'm sure she was right; I know I felt sorry for the children of my acquaintance who had no grandparents at all.
For years I had it in mind to take up the matter of gender differences in reproduction with an equal opportunities commission, or like body, for I thought it very unjust that men can keep on reproducing more or less forever, while women cannot.
But a chance listening to a radio program set me straight: a scientist explained that women stop reproducing for an excellent evolutionary reason, in that the energy that would have gone into the rearing of their own (many) children can now go in to sustaining their children's offspring. Thus grandmothers play a vital role in ensuring continuity.
"The photo my son took