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| Version 0 | Version 1 |
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| Putting Granny online? No thanks | Putting Granny online? No thanks |
| (4 months later) | |
| I’m all for doing something for old people. But don’t ask me to put family snaps on the web | |
| Sun 1 Oct 2017 00.05 BST | |
| Last modified on Sat 2 Dec 2017 02.39 GMT | |
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| Today is National Grandparents’ Day. AgeUK is asking people to tweet, Instagram, hashtag (and other words your granny would not have understood) a photograph of their beloved ancestors, marked #grandpics, with a suggested donation of £5 with every photograph. | Today is National Grandparents’ Day. AgeUK is asking people to tweet, Instagram, hashtag (and other words your granny would not have understood) a photograph of their beloved ancestors, marked #grandpics, with a suggested donation of £5 with every photograph. |
| They asked me directly to do this. I said no. F*** em, I said. | They asked me directly to do this. I said no. F*** em, I said. |
| I didn’t say f*** em. But I did say no. | I didn’t say f*** em. But I did say no. |
| There are three reasons I was nervous. One: I’m basically old enough to be a grandma myself and don’t understand how you’d convert an old photo album into a tweet. Two: I don’t tend to post family photos at all, being in the odd position that “paparazzi” have, from time to time, snatched pictures of our little daughter. | There are three reasons I was nervous. One: I’m basically old enough to be a grandma myself and don’t understand how you’d convert an old photo album into a tweet. Two: I don’t tend to post family photos at all, being in the odd position that “paparazzi” have, from time to time, snatched pictures of our little daughter. |
| I understand why they have. Our daughter looks much as you might imagine: small hands, feet, a face and so on. But people do like the specifics, don’t they? Your friends will always ask to see pictures of the kids and, if you’re on TV, strangers are a bit like friends. | I understand why they have. Our daughter looks much as you might imagine: small hands, feet, a face and so on. But people do like the specifics, don’t they? Your friends will always ask to see pictures of the kids and, if you’re on TV, strangers are a bit like friends. |
| It’s not their fault this creates a weird scenario whereby there’s a monetary value on a toddler’s image, motivating photographers to jump out from behind hedges. But we try not to put our holiday snaps online, for fear it looks like we welcome the attention and don’t mind her being followed about. It might be beckoning down the same road if I tweeted photos of myself cuddling my equally cute little grandparents. | It’s not their fault this creates a weird scenario whereby there’s a monetary value on a toddler’s image, motivating photographers to jump out from behind hedges. But we try not to put our holiday snaps online, for fear it looks like we welcome the attention and don’t mind her being followed about. It might be beckoning down the same road if I tweeted photos of myself cuddling my equally cute little grandparents. |
| (What? They were Jews, born 100 years ago! Of course they were small! Height was invented in about 1981. In Holland.) | (What? They were Jews, born 100 years ago! Of course they were small! Height was invented in about 1981. In Holland.) |
| So, I’m going to try depicting them with words instead. Here are four snapshots: | So, I’m going to try depicting them with words instead. Here are four snapshots: |
| • My grandma Martha, who lived in a flat with vibrant patterned carpet, liked to make the Sunday roast in advance. 24 hours in advance. Chicken, potatoes, peas, the lot. Then she’d heat it all up in the morning. Lunch with her was slightly peculiar but it was never late. #grandpics | • My grandma Martha, who lived in a flat with vibrant patterned carpet, liked to make the Sunday roast in advance. 24 hours in advance. Chicken, potatoes, peas, the lot. Then she’d heat it all up in the morning. Lunch with her was slightly peculiar but it was never late. #grandpics |
| • Grandpa Sam was handsome and funny and smoked a great deal. We didn’t quite know what he did for a living. He was possibly a plumber, or a handyman, or a debt collector. At any rate, he had a big spanner. Everyone said that he could have done anything, if only his father had let him go to university. #grandpics | • Grandpa Sam was handsome and funny and smoked a great deal. We didn’t quite know what he did for a living. He was possibly a plumber, or a handyman, or a debt collector. At any rate, he had a big spanner. Everyone said that he could have done anything, if only his father had let him go to university. #grandpics |
| • Grandma Isabel was smiley, sparkly, cuddly and deaf like a grandma in a storybook. She was supposed to spend her life as a glamorous European socialite, not a lonely foreigner in Derby and Stanmore, but war got in the way and you had to figure you were lucky to be alive. She remembered being in Budapest when Lenin died, but I never asked about it because I was more interested in playing bridge with her. If you bid a suit and she raised to game, she’d cry: “Don’t invite me to a party if you don’t expect me to dance!” #grandpics | • Grandma Isabel was smiley, sparkly, cuddly and deaf like a grandma in a storybook. She was supposed to spend her life as a glamorous European socialite, not a lonely foreigner in Derby and Stanmore, but war got in the way and you had to figure you were lucky to be alive. She remembered being in Budapest when Lenin died, but I never asked about it because I was more interested in playing bridge with her. If you bid a suit and she raised to game, she’d cry: “Don’t invite me to a party if you don’t expect me to dance!” #grandpics |
| • Grandpa Michael was a downbeat sort of fellow. His mother and siblings thought he was a terrible pessimist, always expecting the worst. So they didn’t go with him when he left Prague for England in 1939, setting off quickly with nothing but a briefcase. They stayed behind and they were taken to the camps and died there. He never got over the guilt. He liked to grow sweetcorn in the garden. #grandpics | • Grandpa Michael was a downbeat sort of fellow. His mother and siblings thought he was a terrible pessimist, always expecting the worst. So they didn’t go with him when he left Prague for England in 1939, setting off quickly with nothing but a briefcase. They stayed behind and they were taken to the camps and died there. He never got over the guilt. He liked to grow sweetcorn in the garden. #grandpics |
| There: I make that £20 for AgeUK. | There: I make that £20 for AgeUK. |
| The third reason I was nervous to tweet photos is that I thought, if you’re a lonely old person with internet access, you wouldn’t feel better to see a riotous celebration of family life. | The third reason I was nervous to tweet photos is that I thought, if you’re a lonely old person with internet access, you wouldn’t feel better to see a riotous celebration of family life. |
| That’s the ultimate point, isn’t it? That is what lies behind the enterprise: the country’s masses of lonely and forgotten old folk with nobody to tell about their day or their life, their worrying health problem or their cold damp bedroom. Nobody to give them a hug, a squeeze, a reheated Sunday roast. | That’s the ultimate point, isn’t it? That is what lies behind the enterprise: the country’s masses of lonely and forgotten old folk with nobody to tell about their day or their life, their worrying health problem or their cold damp bedroom. Nobody to give them a hug, a squeeze, a reheated Sunday roast. |
| Is it giving with one hand and taking away with the other, to celebrate our elders by parading happy families in front of them? | Is it giving with one hand and taking away with the other, to celebrate our elders by parading happy families in front of them? |
| Such a parade might be cripplingly sad if you were widowed and without grandchildren or estranged from your children and their offspring. Those are the saddest estrangements. In my observation, however small the spats or huge the rifts, it usually comes down to both sides yearning for more love than they think they’re getting. Or for love to be shown in a different way. Yet they somehow can’t change the dynamic. Heartbreaking. | Such a parade might be cripplingly sad if you were widowed and without grandchildren or estranged from your children and their offspring. Those are the saddest estrangements. In my observation, however small the spats or huge the rifts, it usually comes down to both sides yearning for more love than they think they’re getting. Or for love to be shown in a different way. Yet they somehow can’t change the dynamic. Heartbreaking. |
| But this campaign will raise money to help address the danger of loneliness among the elderly, with advice and helplines and volunteers, which is such a huge and important cause. I haven’t given to AgeUK for a long time, not since our (LET ME BE CLEAR, BEAUTIFUL) daughter was born. I’m experiencing that cliche of motherhood: overnight, you start hearing the cries of babies and children all over the world and you forget how to care about anything else. | But this campaign will raise money to help address the danger of loneliness among the elderly, with advice and helplines and volunteers, which is such a huge and important cause. I haven’t given to AgeUK for a long time, not since our (LET ME BE CLEAR, BEAUTIFUL) daughter was born. I’m experiencing that cliche of motherhood: overnight, you start hearing the cries of babies and children all over the world and you forget how to care about anything else. |
| When I was single, I always gave to old people’s charities. I thought the kiddie ones had no trouble raising money: it’s easy to make a poster when you can show huge, sad eyes in a tiny, innocent face. Same with cats. | When I was single, I always gave to old people’s charities. I thought the kiddie ones had no trouble raising money: it’s easy to make a poster when you can show huge, sad eyes in a tiny, innocent face. Same with cats. |
| Incontinence and osteoporosis, among those sullied by life and time and changing politics, are not so easily romanticised. But the elderly should have priority, I thought, because the clock is ticking harder; there is no hope of happier future decades. | Incontinence and osteoporosis, among those sullied by life and time and changing politics, are not so easily romanticised. But the elderly should have priority, I thought, because the clock is ticking harder; there is no hope of happier future decades. |
| And then I had a baby. And that was that. | And then I had a baby. And that was that. |
| Anyone who says that parents are more “empathic” than the childless is quite wrong. If anything, it’s less so. My empathy changed direction and shrank. The idea of a suffering child is now unbearable to a degree I never imagined, but everyone else, with all their needs and sorrows, has drifted away. | Anyone who says that parents are more “empathic” than the childless is quite wrong. If anything, it’s less so. My empathy changed direction and shrank. The idea of a suffering child is now unbearable to a degree I never imagined, but everyone else, with all their needs and sorrows, has drifted away. |
| I wish my grandparents were still alive and could see her. | I wish my grandparents were still alive and could see her. |
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