Great grandparents. There are a lot more of them about than there used to be. That dawned on me the other day as I watched my grandson and my parents together - the fourth and the first living generations.

The latter are probably more typical of today's great grandparents than of yesterday's. They aren't remote and doddering. They're active and they're fun. They had him chuckling away as they played with him. And besides them, he has two other great grandmothers. He's lucky - and so are they because they represent something of a passing phenomenon. I suspect that in years to come, great grandparents will be few and far between.

There are plenty of them at present, though, because of increased life expectancy combined with a tendency, until the past couple of decades, for people to marry quite young.

The parents of many people of my own generation married early, during the war, when there didn't seem to be much point in waiting because no-one knew what the future held. Our generation, growing to adulthood at the start of the 1960s, married early because we could afford to. Jobs were plentiful and housing was cheap.

Even though our own children have tended to start their families later than we did (jobs are no longer plentiful and housing is cripplingly expensive), many of us have become grandparents while we are still relatively young and while our own parents are still around.

But what of the future? What chance, for instance, of us becoming great grandparents - the two of us, together, as a surviving couple? Our own daughter, fairly typical of her generation, was 29 before Sam was born. If he's the same age before he becomes a father, we'll be in our mid-80s when we become great grandparents. Possible, but a long shot.

However, if his child is the same age before adding a new generation, our daughter will be nearly 90 before she reaches the happy situation that my parents, a decade or more younger than that, are at now.

Unless there's another change in social trends, four-generation families will become a great rarity again - which will be a terrible shame. The very young have a lot to learn from the old. And the old have a lot to gain from the very young - chiefly a spirit of renewal, a new interest in life, and a good reason to hang on in there.

We haven't had a Shining Example of the Week for some time. So here is one. It's Mr Frank D Woodall, of Shipley, whose name crops up from time to time on our Letters page and in Feedback.

I had a chat with Mr Woodall the other weekend at the Norman Rae Gala Day at Northcliffe Woods. He was telling me about his holiday.

He had been to Germany, on his own and speaking no German, the main purpose of the trip being to visit a silver mine which is now a tourist showpiece. During his visit, Mr Woodall found himself faced with the prospect of climbing long ladders to different levels of the mine. Was he daunted by it? No way. He climbed the ladders.

Not bad for someone of 86, eh? I know many people half that age who would give anything to be blessed with that sort of confidence and spirit of adventure.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.