Last updated 15:09, Thursday, 20 November 2008

HAVE you ever woken with a start in the early hours of the morning, with the inescapable feeling you are not alone?

I always know that the reassuring presence of Mrs Hextol is there, but the other morning, I discovered that she appeared to have grown an extra arm.

Further exploration of the bed revealed several more unexplained limbs – and then I remembered that all the grandchildren had come to stay.

We had managed to find individual beds for all three of them, but in the dead of night, they had all crept into Nana and Granda’s bed, so while our two heads were at one end of the bed, there were another three at the other.

The three heads – two blonde and the other blond – were all slumbering peacefully away, which presented quite a contrast to their demeanour the night before, when they had roared round the house like the hordes of Genghis Khan.

It may be that one gets out of the way of dealing with small children, for my own four never seemed to squirt around like spit on a griddle the way these three did.

No sooner had I finished retrieving one from the dog’s basket, than there was a screech of alarm from the living room, where another was attempting to reverse his bike into the fire.

The fire wasn’t lit, but Mrs Hextol’s vase of chrysanthemums was in imminent danger of toppling.

They even commandeered the television, where they are entranced by assorted detritus from across the Pond, with names like Strawberry Shortcake, Tiny Pops and something to do with multi-coloured monkeys.

When I endeavoured to change channels to catch a glimpse of the football, and watched it for more than 15 seconds, a mini-delegation streaked through to the kitchen howling: “ Nana, Granda’s been watching the football for HOURS and we are missing our programmes!”

A furious Mrs Hextol swept through with a look of disdain, and turned the television back to the simian superstars.

I looked for support to the only other male member of the household, two-year-old Alex, but he was far too busy cramming three horses and a pig into a one-wheeled Dinky horse box designed for a single stallion, which used to belong to his father.

If it’s not the television, it’s the computer, for no matter how unobtrusively I sneak out of the room when they are otherwise engaged to have a quiet half-hour playing Lexulous, they have teleported upstairs before I get there.

The girls will chorus “We want to play Bratz ponies/ Bratz fish tank/ Star Dolls, not this boring game.”

Alex meanwhile doesn’t want to play anything, other than switching the computer off, so my Lexulous opponent brands me a cheating dog.

When they do go home, I am in dire need of a Radox bath, to soothe my aching joints and muscles, for when the television and computer eventually pall, it’s time to play with Granda.

Both my grandfathers were remote, ancient codgers, much given to pocket watches, hawking and spitting on the fire and would no more have played boisterous games with their grandchildren than have held hands with their wives.

Modern Granda games involve practising all the karate kicks, back elbows and vicious kidney chops the kids have learned from Mr Myagi on Karate Kids 1, 2 and 3 – on my bulging belly.

The girls take it in turn to do the kicking and chopping until I scream for mercy – then a giggling Alex will weigh in with a couple of boots to the shin.

Once they have brought me to the floor like some wounded warthog round a Serengeti drinking hole, they line up to clamber on my back, pulling my hair and twisting my ears until I stand up, and canter round the room with them clinging on like grim death.

Both the girls are would-be X-Factor contestants, although six-year-old Erin does seem to be stuck in something of a vocal time warp.

How many other children of her age could sing a word perfect version of the Connie Francis classics Stupid Cupid and Lipstick on your collar?

She has taught them both to four-year-old Abbey, and they sang them with such gusto that Erin was subsequently off school for a couple of days with a bout of tonsillitis.

It was my fault of course, for “winding them up.”