It wouldn't take Inspector Morse to deduce that Sheila Hancock is one fabulous granny

Call it fate or simple coincidence, but it’s a rare week when private thoughts don’t collide with a similar topic in the real world. My bedtime reading is currently Sheila Hancock’s The Two of Us, a biography and autobiography that entertainingly skips the reader from theatrical anecdotes involving Tom Courteney and ‘Dickie’ Attenborough, to heartwrenching details of the love affair with late husband, actor John Thaw. Some of the most moving descriptions, in a biography full of tear-jerking anecdotes, involve Hancock’s grandchildren. She is clearly a sterling granny, offering laughs and cuddles, and obviously relishes the chance to re-enter a child’s world. If only all grandparents were as lucky, I mused, to be able to spend plenty of time with their grandchildren.

My children’s doting grandparents all live too far to be able to spend more than high days and holidays with us. While friends who are unlucky enough to have separated from their partners face a very tricky balancing act when trying to keep in touch with former in-laws.

This morning I picked up the Independent and read news of Children’s Secretary Ed Balls’ promising new rights for grandparents. Transparent  appeal to win votes or not, it highlights the fact that many grandparents lose out when it comes to separation and divorce. Furthermore, as Balls puts it, ‘Grandparents are often the unsung heroes when it comes to informal childcare for children and young people. They play an invaluable role for millions of families, helping to bring up children and also helping working families balance work and family life’. Essentially, many grandparents act as unpaid nannies, something I can see with my own eyes every time I drop one of my children at school or nursery. So how about better childcare provision along with the rhetoric, Mr Balls, so that Gramps can spend his retirement swinging around a golf course instead of having to spend another decade on the school run?

Or, as Hancock writes to her grandson (transcribed below), it would be great if grandparents were given the chance to have a great time actually being a grandparent. Until I read Hancock’s letter, I hadn’t really considered how much fun being a grandparent could be – it sounds potentially all the fun with none of the responsibility. Should I be lucky enough to be a granny one day, I hope I behave just as ‘disgracefully’ as Sheila Hancock does.

A letter to Sheila Hancock’s grandson Jack, from The Two of Us (Bloomsbury, £17.99 hardback).

Dear Jack,

When I grew old enough to know better I had an irresistible desire to go on a seesaw. I sometimes wanted to play hopscotch too. Or pull faces at strangers. But I was sixty years old. My hair was going grey and I was respectable. So I had to behave, but I was very very depressed. You see, I didn’t feel old but people, even your mummy, told me to ‘act your age’, which meant taking things slowly, being serious and driving a Saab and feeling very very bored.

Then a wonderful thing happened. You arrived. Your daddy was holiding you wrapped in a blue blanket and I knew then that I loved you not that much (I am doing the arms thing), not that much – but that much (very wide arms). We celebrated with a bottle of champagne and lots of laughter and that’s how it’s been ever since. Because I’ve got you with me I can go on seesaws, go down slides, dance in the streets, go on funfairs, watch Babe over and over, have pillows fights and bite people’s bums. I got a sports Jaguar telling people that I thought my grandson would like it. That was a fib. I like it. I like everything I do with you. Being in the garden in the rain, throwing things in streams, feeding ducks,  flying kites, sailing boats, giggling till it hurts, even reading Snow White and the Seven bloody Dwarfs! With you I don’t have to be an old lady. I’m very lucky, mind you, that you have turned out to be such a very nice grandson. In fact, come to think of it, I’m the luckiest Nana in the world.