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As Martin Amis says it is “uncool” to be a grandparent, a fellow grandfather disagrees
by Trevor Grove
Martin Amis does so like to make one’s flesh creep. Musing on old age at the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival this week, he said that becoming a grandfather was like “getting a telegram from the mortuary”. What did the telegram say? “Hey, Grandad, here I am. Time for you to start shuffling off your mortal coil?”
How unlike my own response to my son-in-law’s phone call 19 months ago to announce the arrival of Kitty. She was my first grandchild. I suppose my feelings were just as self-centred as Amis’s, though what I thought as I held the mewling bundle in my arms was not “Hello Death,” but “Wow! Immortality!”
Thomas Hardy was equally upbeat about generations succeeding each other. “I am the family face,” he wrote in his poem Heredity. “Flesh perishes, I live on/Projecting trait and trace/Through time to times anon.” The truth is, Kitty’s face was much too scrumpled to project a trait or trace of her grandpa’s features and furthermore, she had red hair, which was certainly nothing to do with me…Continue reading
