Set in the last years of the war and the first tentative years of peace, it tells of the worries of the ‘grown ups’ as they ‘make do and mend’  and of the child becoming accustomed to the ‘stranger’ in her life ~ the father she has seen so little of during the wartime years. However, it is a life full of adventures for one who is only three and sweetly oblivious to the carnage happening elsewhere...
 
Granddad works in the big gardens and has a wheelbarrow for her to ride in and he tells her fireside stories at bedtime before going off ‘to do his duty’ in the Home Guard ~ to search for ‘pies and nasties’  (spies and Nazis).  Then the doodlebugs come and there are long rides in trains...  but things would be all right in the end because Granddad said so.

This is a heart warming story of the home front as Britain picks itself up and dusts itself down.  It is about an innocent time, when children did not want what others had, nor were they jealous of the ‘gentry’. It was not considered odd to listen to a ventriloquist on the wireless or to have dripping on one’s bread or rabbit for Sunday dinner. The children sang the National Anthem out loud in school whilst standing to attention and were taught to count their blessings.  A far-off time that can be visited by reading this enjoyable and unashamedly nostalgic book.