IS granny looking after your children this summer? Then give granny a hug. Treasure and cherish her. She is a heroine. What's more, she's an endangered species.

Fewer grannies - or granddads - are willing to babysit for their grandchildren these days. That's because many of them are still working themselves.

The Have It All generation is now hitting its fifties and sixties. They are the first generation of women who expected to have a career and children and who have worked pretty well full time all their lives. Many are still pursuing their careers. If they spent the early part of their working lives permanently exhausted by juggling their jobs and their children, then they are not terribly inclined to start juggling for someone else's children.

And if they've got this far and have finally reached retirement, then they deserve a rest. It's going to take quite a lot for them to swop Saga cruises for coping with a couple of fractious toddlers or stroppy seven-year-olds.

What grown up children have to accept is that their own parents might actually have lives of their own. Amazing, isn't it?

For years, when my children were tiny, I had to do all my interviews on Wednesdays because that was the one day that my mother - the most devoted and doting of grandmothers - was free. The rest of the week she was working or playing golf. So often I used just to take the boys with me to work, which, come to think of it, was what my mother had done with me.

But there is another problem. Although we read regularly of grannies in their thirties, the trend is the other way. More women are having their children later. The knock-on effect means that if our children become parents at the same age that we did, we could be knocking on for 70 before we get to be grannies, 80 by the time those children are in full theme park/football playing/bike riding mode.

And however young and fit and active - pray God - we may feel, there is a limit.

Behind every successful woman, there's usually another woman looking after her children. If it's your mother, then make the most of her.

Any day now she could find herself a job, a hobby, a holiday. Or even a toy boy.

Because these days, that's what grannies do.

HOW on earth did it happen? Newcastle nursery nurses Christopher Lille and Dawn Reed have finally been cleared of abuse. Again.

With the benefit of hindsight - always so much clearer, of course - we can see that this case started from virtually nothing yet was immediately fanned into fury and totally out of control. And we are left with two ruined lives, a malicious report and a massive libel bill. Not to mention the effect on the children questioned as witnesses.

There is something about the very word paedophile that immediately whips us into a frenzy, that turns otherwise sensible citizens into a lynch mob, throwing all common sense out of the window. Remember the case in South Wales where a respectable paediatrician was hounded out because the mob didn't know the difference between a paediatrician and a paedophile?

Of course, in cases of child abuse we have to act quickly. But that shouldn't be so quickly that we don't have time to think.

Like counting to ten when you're in danger of losing your temper, maybe anyone involved in dealing with future cases of child abuse on flimsy evidence will stop, say "Newcastle" to themselves - and actually think about what they're doing, before they go and do it.

ON top of her obituary in The Times this week, the life of actress Carmen Silvera (pictured right) was summed up in one line: "'Allo 'Allo star, poker player and charity fund raiser" - which seems an admirable summing up of a splendidly well-balanced life.

Climbers get rescued from mountains, sailors from the sea. Footballers and skiers get their legs rebuilt. Speeding motorists get themselves put back together. People who stuff themselves with deep fried everything and chips are as much entitled to treatment as anyone else. And careless DIYers tend to rush, dripping, to the head of the queue.

So if all those self-inflicted injuries are entitled to treatment, then why shouldn't the alcoholic George Best have another go at life with a new liver?

Only the seriously sanctimonious would say otherwise. The rest of us would do well to treat others' weaknesses more kindly - in case one day it is our turn.

THE cherries I've been eating so happily this summer are delicious - and expensive. That's why I tell the lady at Marks & Spencer's checkout not to tell me just how much.

The season's so short and it's such a healthy indulgence. But in an idle cherry-eating moment, I've just worked it out. 30 cherries cost me £3.16 - which is 10.5p per cherry. Gulp.

Or - if you're felling really old fashioned and masochistic - 2s 2d in old money for every single cherry.

Think I'll have to go back to pigging out on free gooseberries from the hedgerows.

Watching parents dragging, pulling, shaking their children through town in the holidays, as well as shouting, threatening and swearing at them, and having screaming matches outside Woolworths, I felt suddenly smug.

Finally there's something to be said for teenagers who spend all day snoring under the duvet and leave the rest of us in peace

Television historian Simon Schama has just signed a £3m contract for two television series and three books.

It seems we can't get enough of history. We are fascinated and inspired by it and eager to learn as much as we can. Yet fewer children want to study it in school.

Maybe they should put Simon Schama in charge of the national curriculum.