COLIN HOGG

AFTER RAISING SIX CHILDREN, TWO GRANDKIDS SHOULD BE CHILD’S PLAY, RIGHT?

In an achievement almost as outstanding as winning the America’s Cup, I have crested the hurdle of the first sleepover with the grandkids. Well, two of the grandkids. Surviving all seven of them staying for the night might be another sporting achievement altogether. Like climbing Mt Everest, perhaps.

One of the several upsides about living temporarily back in Auckland is being in the same city as three of those grandchildren, who I’m now getting to know like I couldn’t before. Well, not for more than the occasional day or two, which doesn’t work so well for little kids.

Now that I’m nearby, I’m on the school pick-up schedule.

I do Fridays with Miharo, who’s seven. I get her from school, which is only a couple of suburbs away from our temporary home, and she hangs out with me until her mum or dad picks her up.

But her little sister Kura, who’s four and stays home on Fridays, got tetchy about being left out, so they both came over to stay the night. Some of the details were agreed beforehand. We’d have spag bol for dinner. There might be ice cream. There was a lot of discussion about flavours.

The dinner went well, if messily. “Your sagetti is much redder than Dad’s,” said Kura through a messy mouthful. “His is brown.”

“It’s the paprika,” I told her, though I could see why bunging that into the sauce might have been a bad idea. Half the granddaughter’s face and most of her fingers were now dyed a vivid orangy-red. I didn’t fret. Grandparents don’t fret.

It’s part of the deal with grandparenting, one of the best parts. I can see there’s quite a lot of potential for spoiling, the sort of thing you’d do only very rarely as a parent. But for grandparents, a bit of spoiling is almost compulsory.

Things went so well on the first sleepover that we had another one the next week. I even got away with serving spag bol again and, again, the little girls went off to bed at a most civilised hour.

“What sorcery is this?” their mother wanted to know after I sent her a message announcing they were asleep and it wasn’t even half past eight yet. They’d seemed worn out, but the little one announced, in her last words before she dropped off to sleep, “I’ll tell you when I’m awake.”

I’d promised pancakes for breakfast, which I should have kept quiet about, then I wouldn’t have had to get up in the dark to make them. But a deal is a deal, particularly if it’s a deal with a grandparent.

Family life has intensified in all sorts of ways since we moved back to Auckland. We see a lot of our 18-year-old youngest daughter, who lives in a flat with her boyfriend and a friend and her boyfriend. Things are a lot better there since we bought them a dehumidifier.

Their clothes have stopped going mouldy, though they still don’t have a washing machine. We’re their laundry, which I suppose is also part of the deal.

Until someone buys them a washing machine...