When will little old grannies disappear? For as long as I can remember there have been a little old grannies. They have ill fitting cardigans, oversized shopping bags, they are frail and hunched and very often their white hair is in a loose bun. When I was very small they used to have blue straw hats with hat pins, then for a long time they had plastic macs and rain hoods, indeed even now occasionally a granny can be seen with a rain hood. My granny was a little old granny when she was only sixty. We used to go round and visit her and she would give me a tin of condensed milk and a teaspoon. She used to add up her finances by writing sums on the wallpaper in copy-ink pencil. Nevertheless even though styles have changed, and fashions have come and gone, for the most part the grannies have remained exactly the same, as though no matter what women have worn throughout their lives, at some point, like butterflies, they enter a life stage which necessitates them metamorphosing into grannies. The question is, will the current generation of baby boomers approaching granny age go the same way? Will women who started out as hippy chicks, and who still dress and have life-styles more like a forty year old than sixty, nevertheless one day waken up and find themselves drawn to the flat shoes and lisle stockings of the granny? Or will the granny pass from our sight, like the passenger pigeon, Ajax scouring powder, or real Victory "V" lozenges?
