Dear LPG,

I have spent the past 3 months living in two houses in a way, because every week I spend two days some 35 miles away from home looking after my young grandchildren.  I was surprised to read your post which was dated 20^th August this year because it reflected exactly my situation and my feelings about the first time I took my grandchildren to the play area in a park so far away from home, but I want to talk about another aspect of being a babysitting grandma today.

Part of being a good grandma is making sure that the little ones eat well, and I have come to know my children’s kitchen as well as my own, but I suppose that my mind is getting a bit fuzzy and it is beginning to show.  We have already confirmed that part of the job is pram-pushing, as BJ describes it, and one can’t help passing the shops on the way to, from, before or after that journey. 

I don’t really class myself as a shopaholic but I have to admit to finding myself doing what comes naturally when I get there and that is to let whatever it is that jogs my memory draw me into the shops rather than just passing them by.  There is always something to see and a treat to buy for the children, but my mind has a habit of forcing my hand to pop a bottle of washing up liquid, some eggs or some other kitchen essential into the shopping basket as I pass by the appropriate shelf just because I know that we are running out.

But, and this is beginning to happen more and more often these days, I then find myself getting back ‘home’ and realising that there is an abundance of that item in the kitchen and that the thing I bought was needed back in Lewisham.  The fact is that the two kitchens are getting well and truly mixed up in my minds shopping list.  So, because I really don’t want to add washing up liquid to the luggage I have to carry on the train journey to my real home, my daughter and son in law end up with too much of some things in the cupboards while I still have none at home, or vice versa.

Do other Grandmas have this problem?

KD, Catford