ARAN, chunky as you like, and no pattern daunts me but the delicate, feathery stitches of baby gear are not my thing. Not even for my own. She got an Aran pram rug from me and others did the lacy stuff.

That's why when friends - and now friends' children - produce babies, I give the girls Little Grey Rabbit and the boys Thomas the Tank Engine. It's partly on the grounds of my knitting and partly because new mums are overwhelmed with togs in early sizes.

Bryony Charlotte's arrival reminded me that I had used the last "Grey Rabbit" in the drawer where I hoard presents. There were none in our local bookshops either. They could be ordered, but now had more modern illustrations.

Given what Disney, unprovoked, did to Winnie the Pooh, I wasn't risking anyone else's idea of the characters so precisely pictured by Margaret Tempest for Alison Uttley's stories.

It would have to be Peter Rabbit. He's still there, still in Beatrix Potter's delicate colours, still in small, white dust-jacketed books, though I plumped for a larger format holding several stories.

With a baby boy, there's no problem. Thomas is everywhere and in video and audio, too, chuffing round Sodor as ever, despite a politically correct attempt to slim down the Fat Controller.

Cynically, I wonder if it's because there's little scope for commercial spin-offs from the home life of a rabbit, a squirrel and a hare - an unlikely house-share there. But well-dressed kittens and a duck in a headscarf have kept Beatrix Potter on the shelves in spite of hefty competition from attractive, modern characters.

Now the books I buy are for friends' grandchildren, I expect to need farewell presents for the friends as they follow the recently-reported trend and move nearer their children.

Grown-up children don't live down the street or a short bus-ride away. Even if their work, or ours, hasn't put half the country between us, they'll have chosen a newly-built house away on the outskirts of town or in an expanding village.

And grown-up children need two incomes to support a mortgage, grocery bill and new baby, while parents may be at the stage where they are ready to sell up and "downsize".

That's so handy. Grandma and grandpa living nearby, experienced, doting and, with luck, retired, are the best baby-minders in the business. Even if baby-minding isn't needed, baby sitting is and, again, they're designed for the job.

That's if they want it and, it seems, they do. Grandparents are upping sticks, not with an eye on some care when they come to need it, but with the immediate aim of being around to help.

Coping without grandparents at all is grim; I hope the flitting wrinklies are appreciated for the boon they'll be.

Would I do it, in the unlikely event? Not when our house here would hardly buy a decently-appointed dog kennel there. No good, pet, you'd have to stretch to a granny flat - or maybe a staff cottage would be more appropriate