Dear Annabelle Claire Reid Reynolds,

I am told that you are my first grandchild. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, grandaughter.
Thank you for your card. It is so comforting to know what someone looks like. In these internet days so many connections occur without one ever seeing the other person. I have no idea what my managing editor at the publishing society looks like. She is retiring anyway. There is room for a high-tech version of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard if you turn out to be a poet.
In the mean time, there are lots of pictures of me on this web site. The one on the front page was taken a long time ago, when my friend Mark first got hold of a digital camera in the swamp at Macquarie U.
Other pictures are more recent, example just last month.
I rather fancy it may be a long time before we are able to converse in person, you and I. Never mind, you can always come back here. This is one of the beauties of writing. It is becoming a lost art. Not hand writing, but the written word, I mean. I trust you will become a mistress of it!
You will find on this site a record of the first years of the lives of your aunt Merinda and uncle Edwin, pictured here with your Mum. I wish I could do the same for you, record your important moments, your progress, but that may fall to others.
So for now, take care of yourself, grow to recognise your people even if you never meet them, and know that I am here for you for as long as I can manage.

Love,
Grandad.