Caroline Verdon: Grandparents - for us they are completely invaluable

I remember being three or four and having a show and tell at playgroup – other kids brought in toy cars or Tiny Tears dolls, I brought in my Nana. She had so many stories and knew the words to all the nursery rhymes.

For most of my childhood she’d alternate between our house, her house and my cousin’s house and would come to stay with us for a long weekend every fortnight. She never came empty handed, always arriving with homemade quiche, buns and Eccles cakes. We loved her Eccles cakes. She would make either four or eight and they’d arrive in a Tupperware container that she’d lined with kitchen roll.

One weekend that she wasn’t with us, we had friends coming over and they really liked Eccles cakes so my Mum nipped to the shops to pick some up.

After searching high and low she eventually found some in Marks and Spencer…and they came in packs of four or eight. When we opened the packet we all noticed they looked incredibly similar to my Nana’s, even down to the brown sugar sprinkled on the top and the taste was identical.

Without a doubt she had been rumbled. Whether she’d always cheated or whether she was just getting old and struggled with the intricacies of the recipe I don’t know. Either way I found the whole charade endearing and now as a busy Mum juggling a family and work I have on more than one occasion found myself doing the same thing whenever the words ‘bake sale’ are mentioned.

Whilst her weekends were spent with her grandchildren, her weeks were spent volunteering – she ran a free keep fit class for pensioners (she was 90), helped out at a playgroup and also “made tea for the old people at her local Royal British Legion”, all of whom were a good 15 years younger than her. She was incredible. An absolute force to be reckoned with. She had her head screwed on, she understood the importance of family and she was always fun. Plus she let me get away with much more than my parents did and it’s her fault entirely that I’m addicted to Neighbours. When it first started my Mum and Dad felt it was too grown up for me to watch so my Nana used to tape it and I’d secretly watch it at her house during the holidays. Fast forward to 2018 and I’m 35 and have seen every single episode.

Arthur is lucky to have four fantastic grandparents who all want to play large roles in his life and we’re lucky too as I don’t think we’d be coping anywhere near as well with the trials and tribulations of life without their support.

My inlaws live just down the road and they pick him up from nursery once a week and he runs across the playground to them open armed to give them the biggest squeeze when he sees them. My parents both live about five hours away from us but we Facetime every week and they come up for a week at a time every couple of months and we go down and stay with them and he loves showing them around and telling them what he’s been up to.

It’s really beautiful to watch the relationship he has with them and see the excitement in his face when we tell him we’re going to stay at their house. It’s also really lovely to be able to get a night off every once in a while so my husband and I can go out to dinner to somewhere that doesn’t hand you a packet of crayons and a colouring book on arrival.

It’s also quite incredible to see how different our parents are with Arthur compared to how they were with us. Rules in my husband’s or my house growing up included not being able to eat chocolate on weekdays, having to be in bed by 7pm and never watching TV during the day.