One Fort in the Grave, with KEITH FORT

FOR me, being a grandparent is one of the greatest joys I have experienced. And yet it is responsible more than anything for making me feel old.

This was the moment you realised that you were no longer the future any more; that your grandchildren were. I suppose it happened to me when my eldest grandson started at a church infants school and he heard his first Bible stories.

One day I noticed him studying me intensely. He was only four and this went on for some time. Every time I looked up, he was examining my face. Eventually, it came.

"Grandad? Did YOU know Jesus?"

Why did it make me feel old? Because of my lifelong experience of time and mortality which, of course, means nothing to a child of four.

It also makes you realise what a unique relationship we can have with our grandchildren. They are disarmingly truthful with us; they can say anything they want and we don't take offence.

Being a grandfather is one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. But it is also exhausting and demanding and you always wish you were 20 years younger. However, I will never understand the attitude of that minority who don't spend time with their grandchildren, don't hold or marvel at them as they develop, don't encourage their first steps, line their wall with their first Picasso-like portraits; keep photo and video records of their development, teach them letters and numbers and share in their joyful achievements.

And, yes, spoil them. Those who are doting (like me) will do anything for them - change nappies, toilet train, bottle feed and join the fun when porridge ends up in your hair.

What is it about grandparents who dote on their grandchildren? They don't wish to displace parents but they love with intense passion. When they're with them they feel weary, sometimes worn out but full of joy; when they're apart they talk about them constantly and scour the shops for nice clothes, socks, t-shirts and toys. Then the little ones grow up a bit and ask things like: "Grandad? Are you going to die soon?"

Me, meekly: "I hope not. Why?"

"Well, all your hair's falling out!"

And even this doesn't last. After about age six they find friends, new interests, a new world.

We would like to see them just as much, to keep hold of this second chance after being too busy working and living to devote as much love, attention and time to our own children as we would have liked.

But it soon becomes all too apparent that we're becoming redundant as we're pushed into our second retirement until, after the grandchildren reach about 20 we are, if we're still alive, rediscovered as non-judgmental sages, offering love, concern and direction in an increasingly confusing world.

They're so concerned about their own lives that they often overlook asking you about yours. To my eternal regret I failed at this stage to ask my own grandfather about his early life and suddenly it was too late.

Why am I going on about this? Well, grandparent issues don't seem to find much space in newspapers and magazines, between the sordid, the scandalous and the sensational.

But when you are one, you know it's important. We're the ones who try to be a remembered balance against all the magnets and persuasions of modern life, a kind of folk wisdom that we hope will echo in their minds long after we're gone.

Perhaps you only have to remember your own grandparents to realise this. I remember that my grandfather always used to say of something that had broken or become useless: "It's gone west." As a result, I've always said it.

Eventually, I was staggered to learn that this was a saying used by the ancient Egyptians up to 5,000 years ago when they referred to their dead as having "gone west" (following the sun god Rah to the afterlife).

In ways such as this, our grandparents, and now we as grandparents, have the opportunity to pass on our knowledge, sayings and wisdom and possibly achieve that which the ancient Egyptians craved - immortality in the generations ahead of us.