BEFORE I go any further, I fully appreciate how lucky I am. Lucky to have a nice garden. Lucky to have countryside on my doorstep. And lucky to have my only grandchild close by.

But it’s still not easy being a locked down grandad. Perhaps, for the time being, we should rename this column Grandad Not At Large.

That said, three-year-old Chloe lives in the same village, so my wife and I were able to use last Sunday’s daily exercise to set an Easter Bunny hunt under the social distancing rules.

Armed with a white chocolate lamb and a bag of mini eggs, we made our way across the fields, glad to have a definite purpose on another day of treading water. We’d also prepared six clues written on squares of easy-to-spot pink card, complete with big black arrows pointing the way.

Once the first clue was pinned, at Chloe-height, to the stump of a tree in a little wooded area close to where she lives, the next stage of the operation was enacted: I made a pre-arranged phone call to her dad to tell him it was safe to come out of the house and where to look for the first pink card.

I know it was only an Easter Bunny hunt, but I couldn’t help feeling like a spy on a mission of national importance. Even though I knew Chloe wasn’t listening, the telephone instructions were whispered.

The challenge for my wife and I was to run ahead and stay out of sight while pinning more clues to trees and fence posts, before finally leaving the lamb and the eggs by a wall. We then sat on a bench, a safe distance away, and waited.

It wasn’t hard to hear her coming through the trees. “A sign, Daddy! I found another sign! This way, Daddy!” she shouted, followed by “I found it, Daddy! It’s a wickle wam and some eggs!”

We were able to watch the joyful moment of discovery from our bench before we walked towards her to wish her a socially distant “Happy Easter”.

“Ganma! Gandad! I have something very important to tell you! The Easter Bunny left me this wickle wam and lots of eggs!”

Naturally, all we wanted to do next was to give her a big cuddle. It’s been three weeks without a cuddle, but it feels a lot longer, and who knows when it will be allowed?

But, like I said, we’re the lucky ones. She’s not in a different town or country. We still get to see her and talk to her in the flesh, even if we have to resist getting too close.

Fortunately, Chloe wasn’t worried about a lack of cuddles – she was far too distracted by the thought of the Easter Bunny, and all the other unopened Easter treats waiting at her house.

But before she set off back through the trees, she had something else very important to tell us: “Ganma, Gandad, when the cowonaviwus has gone, I’m going to the seaside – you want to come with me?”

Oh yes – and play crazy golf, and dig in the sand, and have an ice cream, and go on the wickle train.

Fingers crossed, we’ll be there in two shakes of a wam’s tail.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

FELLOW grandad, Robin Davison, of Middlesbrough, has had a similar experience.

When he saw his two youngest grandchildren from a distance, he could have cried when his 10-year-old granddaughter said: “I wish I could hug you, Grandad.”

THANK you also to Wendy Acres, of Darlington, for getting in touch with a timely memory about when her niece, Jennie, was at primary school and learning how to use a computer.

Wendy’s mum, who was a highly intelligent woman but did not understand modern technology, suddenly said: “I know why Jennie's getting all these colds. It must be one of those computer viruses.’”

JUST before the lockdown, I was guest speaker at Sedgefield U3A, where Chris Balfour remembered a tale about granddaughter Nell, when she was 8.

With it being Christmas time, the conversation was about candles, and the subject of beeswax candles came up.

Nell went up to bed but wandered back down a couple of hours later with a question: “Granny, how do they get the wax out of the bees’ ears?”