THE realisation that I had become a paddling granny struck me in the sea off Looe on Sunday.

It's one of the things you think will never happen to you. Like wrinkles and rheumatism.

I'm sure all we ladies of a certain age can remember sitting on a beach when we were children and watching grannies hobbling down the pebbles towards the sea. Then, with voluminous floral dresses tucked into knickers (and knickers were knickers in those days, none of your bikinis styles or 'high leg' panties into which you can hardly tuck a tissue never mind nine yards of best glazed cotton) they would stand in delighted anticipation until a wavelet of freezing seawater would lap over their swollen feet.

Paddling grannies usually had one of those iron perms which stayed totally in place even in a stiff sea breeze and quite often were firmly clutching a voluminous handbag. They were usually surrounded by several small grandchildren who skipped about in the waves and got told off for splashing and more often than not one would fall flat on its face into the water and granny would scoop it up and carry it screaming back to the small square of beach occupied by the family and feed it an egg sandwich.

A paddling granny's other duty was to keep an eye on the older grandchildren, so they would stare fiercely out towards the sea to make sure little Tommy did not go out of his depth or bury his sister in the sand.

Sometimes you would see little groups of grannies standing at the sea's edge, water never rising above their ankles, gossiping and laughing and occasionally hitching up an escaping skirt or a slipping vest strap. Because grannies in those days dressed properly for the seaside. Summer dress, petticoat, cardigan, white peep-toe sandals and proper stockings, the latter only removed for the paddle and then put on again. A pac-a-mac would be in their bag just in case, even in a heatwave.

Most of these ladies would have come on an 'outing', a special summer treat which is gradually disappearing.

We used to have various summer outings in our village and my grandmother would compile a list at the beginning of each year of which outings were considered worth going on. She somehow managed to attach herself to every church, chapel, WI, club and political group, regardless of denomination or beliefs so that we would quite likely be on a coachfull of lady Conservatives one week off to see Arundel Castle (and hoping to catch a glimpse of the Duke) and the Methodist's annual trip to Bognor Regis the next. The seaside trips were best.

The coach trip to our chosen destination would begin with my grandmother fighting her way to the best seat, usually next to the driver so she could keep an eye on him, and be punctuated throughout by her asking me if I felt sick, thought I might be sick, and not to eat, read or look out of the window in case I was sick. I usually felt sick by the time we got there.

Once there we would go through the ritual of finding the best place on the beach, which involved walking up and down for 20 minutes viewing the sands. Then the ritual of putting up the deckchair as close to the water as possible (and moving it at least ten times as the tide came in). Then I would don my costume, wriggling under a tent like towel with a drawstring at the neck. My grandmother would settle down, with her flask of tea, a stock of hard boiled eggs, egg sandwiches, cake, biscuits and a bottle of lemonade for me. We didn't believe in spending money when we didn't need to.

Sometime during this my grandmother would have her paddle, and then return to her deck chair and I was free to wander for the whole glorious afternoon. Children could in those days. The only thing I had to remember was where my grandmother was sitting, so I used to pick out a landmark behind her on the promenade.

My grandmother would keep an eye on me too, scanning the sea for my red costume. One year she had watched me for several hours enjoining the sea and the sands when the tide was out. Then to her horror she had seen a man and a woman call me out of the water and lead me away. Abandoning her deckchair she had galloped down the beach and along the sands yelling blue murder to rescue me from their clutches, only to find it wasn't me at all and she had been watching the wrong child all afternoon. I was found, in the opposite direction, and given a severe telling off for no reason that I could see at all.

On the way home there was always drama at the coach stop, somebody was always late, occasionally old ladies would climb on the wrong bus and be carried off to Broadstairs, and small children would have tantrums when buckets of seawater containing the day's catch of crabs were forcibly removed from their little chubby hands.

Back to the present little has changed. The sea was freezing, my grandson took just a few tentative steps into the water then leapt into the waves with abandon with all his clothes on, my granddaughter was busy searching for crabs in between burying her father in the sand, and I rescued my grandchild at the cost of wet trousers and a stubbed toe.

We all got wet, covered in sand, ate crisps, ice cream and fish and chips and at least one of us felt sick on the way home. Magic.