Aware that missing the chance of watching and bonding with our grandson by moving to France was a source of great concern to us, his parents gave us a present last year of a video camera so we could communicate with a video link via Skype.

We have been doing it off and on over the past six months and he has being showing a singular lack of interest in the proceedings.

Last Mondays call, the first since we had seen lots of each other over the Christmas was very different. It was obvious that he recognised both our faces on camera and our voices.

We talked to each other !

Here is an (admittedly blurry) Skype snapshot of the occasion.