The Much Malarkey Manor Guide to Being a Granny

Now I've had a whole day's practise, I feel qualified to share my experience with you all.

1) Make use of the phrase 'I'm a granny, you know,' as much as possible, especially in the context of such things as 'I can't possibly be expected to carry that heavy shopping, I'm a granny you know,' and 'I can't possibly clean out the cat litter trays, I'm a granny you know.' It is important to utilise this phrase as soon as possible because one can't help but suspect the novelty will wear off pretty quickly with other members of the family. Use it as much as you can before this happens.

2) Share grandmotherly advice with Year 8 at school. For example - 'Sit down and be quiet immediately. If you do not follow this grandmotherly advice, you will learn nothing, fail ALL your exams and be doomed to a life of literacy hell.' If you do not have access to Year 8's in a classroom because you don't have the misfortune of being a teacher, hang around your local town's bus station at 4 p.m on a school day and bang as many ankles as you can with a shopping trolley. In fact, even if you are a teacher, do this as well. Heck, we've got to have some fun in life.

3) See how many more cats you can smuggle into the house. Granny's are allowed as many cats as they want. Just don't tell Andy.

4) Adjust your last Will and Testament with the following codicil - 'Any renditions of St Winifred's School Choir singing 'Grandma We Love You,' by ANY member of the family will result in immediate disinheritance.'

5) Remember - if you're fretting about being a granny, think how fretful YOUR mother is at being a great-granny.

6) If you have the urge to go to Build-a-Bear workshop in order to make a bear that will share the same birthday as your new grand-daughter, be prepared and select a name for the aforementioned bear BEFORE going to get it made. If you don't, the birth certificate machine will make relentless demands that you enter the bear's name IMMEDIATELY and you will be panicked into calling it something completely random. Like Arthur. Like I did yesterday.

7) Remind all GCSE students that you will be no more generous in marking their mock exam papers now you are a granny than you were last month when you weren't. Explain that grannies may come across all soft and sentimental and obliging, but that it is all a facade and we are, in fact, a bunch of miserable old bags harbouring a lifetime of injustice, resentment and bitter experience.

8) Rejoice in the knowledge that you are now entitled to be recognised with cards and gifts in celebration of 'Grandparents' Day' in September. This is despite the fact you've never acknowledged your own parents on this day because it would only be yet another occasion when your mother insists on you not buying her anything and wasting your money on me, love.

9) Tell everyone you know that you are now a granny. Tell everyone you don't know, too. Hopefully, someone will utter the magic words 'But you don't look old enough.' If they don't, do not fret. What do they know anyway, the ignorant sods?

10) Do not panic that the pain you felt near your elbow is the onset of osteoarthritis. Have a look. It's a bruise. See?

11) Enjoy the feeling of giving your grand-daughter a loving, squeezy cuddle, feeling a little bottom burp through her baby-gro and knowing you can hand her straight back to her father for a nappy change. If necessary, employ the phrase, 'I can't possibly change a nappy. I'm a granny, you know.'

And that's about it.