A WEEK or so back, our grandson told me he'd got a toy watch. We were speaking on the phone one evening just before he went to bed.

Jonah loves phones. One of his first and favourite toys was a fat brightly-coloured plastic telephone that plays cheery tunes at the press of a button. He also has a toy mobile phone, which, if left switched on, sits in a corner of the room burbling away to itself. He very soon learned to hold the handset to his ear and chatter away into it, long before anyone had any idea what he was saying. If there wasn't a toy phone around, the real one would do, or anything that looked like one, such as the television remote control.

It's when anyone spoke on the other end that he was flummoxed.

He'd hold the handset at a safe distance and scowl at it, clearly wondering where on earth that disembodied voice was coming from.

No amount of "Hello there, sweetheart. This is Nana speaking", would bring any other response. He just didn't get it.

When you live hundreds of miles from your family, you want to use every possible means of keeping in touch. With grown-up children, it's easy. There's the phone, of course; catch them at the right moment and they'll talk for hours, about work and social life - or, these days, all about the latest home improvements.

Then there's email; the phone's better, because you can hear that familiar voice, but they're often chattier by email, since that way they get in touch as and when it suits them. For gap-year travel, email is a modern miracle. I first found out about emails when our son was on the other side of the world. To get an instant reply to an email picked up somewhere in China was mind-boggling.

Letters are good too. Few people write them these days, which is a pity, because you can keep letters and re-read them. Yet how did people bear it in days gone by when their family lived miles away and letters were the only means of keeping in touch? A hundred or so years ago, if the youngsters had emigrated overseas a single letter could take weeks to reach the folks back home.

It wouldn't really bring much reassurance either, because you'd know that by the time you were reading it anything could have happened. Thank goodness things have moved on since then!

Nowadays, you can even see how they're getting on. My son has a digital camera, so he posts pictures on his web site and we can see our grandson's first proper haircut (he doesn't look like a baby any more: he's a small boy now); what he was doing on holiday; how he enjoys playing with his toys; the mess he makes when eating. It makes us all feel closer.

But all we're doing is seeing the family photos immediately instead of after a few weeks. Our grandson can't send emails or write letters. If he won't speak on the phone, the miles that separate us seem very long indeed. As we talked to our son or daughter-in-law, we'd often hear him in the background, chattering away as he played. But put him on the phone and there'd be silence or, worse, tears, because he wanted to play with the handset but wasn't allowed to. No gran wants to upset her grandson like that, so we'd give it a rest for a bit.

Then, one day about a week after his second birthday, we tried again.

His Dad held the handset to his ear. I said, "Hello, Jonah. Have you worn your new wellies in the rain?" A little voice said, "Yes".

It wasn't much, and he wouldn't say any more, but suddenly the miles seemed to shrink, the distance seemed very much less. We weren't so far away after all.

Now, every time we ring he takes another step forward. He clamours to speak when he knows we're on the phone, and greets us with a cheery, "Hello!"

Sometimes he'll say "Bye!" at the end.

Then came that news about his toy watch. He was telling me something I hadn't known before. He was keeping us in touch.

Before long he'll be telling us all about the things he's been doing, at home and at nursery. One day he may even phone us all by himself.

We look forward to that - though we know the next stage after that will be the one where you can never get through to him because he's busy chatting to his friends, for hours and hours. Or texting them on his mobile. . .

But until that day comes, we'll enjoy helping him perfect his telephone manner.

Published: 02/04/2004