Our council is currently offering to put in free roof insulation for every house in the district. Which on the face of it is a fantastic offer, and when we heard about it we signed up to it immediately. We have a bit of lagging up in the attic already, but the man from the council told us that they could bung a couple of inches on top of it if we liked.

Unfortunately he then pointed out that in order to do that then we would have to clear all the crap out of the attic first. Suddenly the whole prospect became much less appealing.

While we have recently made moves to render our house fit for human habitation, the attic remains a horrendously chaotic jumble of baby toys, dead electrical equipment, and piles of Kerry’s wedding photography. Occasionally the hatch is opened in order that we can hurl yet another peice of debris onto the pile, but generally the place is treated like a no-mans-land where no mortal dares to tread.

To Amy of course it is a secret repository of toys; where, if she pesters hard enough, she is allowed to venture in order to gather long forgotten teddies, rattles, and baby books which both she and Evan have theoretically grown out of.

I had cause to go up there this afternoon on a hunt for a desk spotlight that I could use to replicate Clair’s rather wonderful photography. Unfortunately I couldn’t find one, but I did take a few photo’s whilst I was up there. Most of which were rubbish, but i was relatively pleased with this one.

It’s a quarterly magazine aimed at teachers in Germany who teach English. This quarters theme is British Festivals, and as well as the usual suspects of bonfire night, Pancake day, and St Valentine’s Day they have chosen to fine tune their focus right down to a celebration that takes place in a little village just South of Huddersfield: Slaithwaite’s Moonraking Festival

And why the hell shouldn’t they, that’s what I say. After all, Slaithwaite is the home to three of the countries most celebrated Bloggers. There’s Rol who’s site once made the Mail on Sunday’s Blog-of-the-week, me who once got quoted on the BBC Webpage alongside proper journalists from the Guardian and the Independent, and Kerry who once got mentioned on the universally acclaimed super-blog All That Comes With It. Is it little wonder that Slaithwate is widely considered to be the blogging capital of Europe.

The magazine itself is in German, and consequently I have no idea what it says. The picture accompanying it on the other hand are absolutely stunning. Whoever took it must have been some sort of photographic genius to produce such fantastic images in such low light levels. I bet they are devastatingly handsome and incredibly intelligent too. I mean, just look at it:

Hang on a minute; that photo looks strangely familiar. Oh yes, I remember now; I took it!

It’s true. I am that mysterious handsome and intelligent photographic genius. Thanks to the creative commons license and Flickr’s evident dearth of half decent photos of last year’s Moonraking, I have now become a published photographer. Hurrah!

A couple of months ago a very pleasant member of the Grundschule Englisch editorial team wrote to me and asked if they could use my photos in their magazine. I said yes of course, and this morning a complimentary copy of the finished product came through my letterbox. How exciting.

If you take a lot of photos and have them on Flickr then I thoroughly recomend placing them under the creative commons license. Not only is it sharing the love, but you also get to see your photos used by other people. As well as my adventures into German teaching my work can also be seen on a PR site promoting rhubarb chutney, on the Schmap’s iPhone guide to the Royal Armories, and on a weird hippy site talking about ying, yang, and your bladder. Someone asked me the other day about including my moonraking photos in a local tourist guide too, so we’ll see if that comes to anything.

Of course I’m not being paid for any of this, but considering the amount of stuff I filch from the internet I think it’s only fair I put something back. It’s punk rock man, punk rock.

The sun was casting a beautiful light on this tractor as I took Amy to school this morning. Unfortunately I completely failed to do it justice. Still, it’s all I’ve got at the moment so it’ll have to do.

I could of course have taken a photo of the big poo Evan did in his potty this morning - his first ever potty poo no less. But I thought those of you with more delicate sensibilities might not have appreciated it.

This morning as I was scraping up Coco Pops from the living room carpet I heard a shriek from over near the window. Half expecting to see Evan hanging from Amy’s ear lobes or some other ingenious form of torture going on I went over to investigate. To my surprise the screaming wasn’t down to my children engaging in the age old tradition of fratricide; but was caused by the rather exciting spectacle of the ground outside being covered in snow.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected however as snow has been forecast for the past few days. Unfortunately the council must not have been watching the same weather reports as me as they hadn’t bothered gritting the roads. Consequently getting Amy and Evan to school and nursery was a bit of a nightmare, but I managed it eventually and then headed out the door with the camera to get some winter worderland shots of the area behind our house.

Looking at Yahoo weather it’s been snowing where our friends Greg and Deb live too. Cheer up Deb, just another five months until spring.

You can see the rest of my snow pictures here.

That’s part of the reason I wanted to take November off blogging. So I could try and concentrate on actually being a dad for a while rather than just writing about it. and I think it’s worked. I’ve a way to go yet, but I’m now reaching a point where I feel comfortable in claiming I’m a good dad again. At least some of the time anyway.

One of the advantages of this whole daddyblogging business is that you can often get advice and support from people, sometimes without that person even realizing that they are providing it. Here’s some words of wisdom that have stuck in my consciousness and have helped me rethink the way I have been behaving with my children. they aren’t exactly direct quotes, but I think I’ve been able to get across the core messages:

• If you are unhappy in one aspect of your life don’t let that poison the parts that you are happy with.
  ^{Greg from Greg and Deb on the Web}
• It’s important to differentiate between a child who is being naughty and a child who is just being five years old.
  ^{(un)relaxeddad from Relaxed Parents}
• Every father should have a spark.
  ^{Roald Dahl from Danny the Champion of the World (OK, not a blog. But still true)}

and I also add a bit of advice of my own creation:

• Get more sleep.

I’ve been a little jealous of Kerry’s Project 365 since she started doing it. However I’m not convinced it would be very sensible to push the boundaries of my burnout by forcing myself to take a photo every day for a year. Still, I should be able to manage every day from now until Christmas; so I’ve decided that this years advent colander will be a Project of my very own creation, Project 24.

My first offering is appropriately seasonal. I am ashamed to admit that the christmas decorations in our house are already up. I just can’t help myself; I’m a christmassy type of guy.

_{(Just in case it’s not clear - you need to click on the “open the door” link on the colander door above to see the photo)}

• Amy had her fifth birthday and two separate fifth birthday parties.
• Evan had two late night visits to A&E with breathing problems and one two night stay in hospital with pneumonia. I really don’t know where all these lung problems with our children are coming from.
• I brought my guitar down from the attic and re-learnt the same 5 easy chords I used to know, then gave up again when it started becoming too hard.
• I discovered that walking round Ikea the wrong way gives me travel sickness.
• I lost another 11lb in weight, bringing the total up to 51lb lost since July. I crave big greasy pizzas.
• I nearly finished nearly all our Christmas shopping.
• I gave up on Battlestar Galactica half way through the third series.
• I forced my next door neighbour Eric to go to the doctors after noticing his foot is so swollen he can no longer get his shoe on.
• I haven’t got round to getting my laptop screen fixed yet
• Evan developed a Peppa Pig fixation, while Amy’s obsession with high School Musical has grown into almost religious proportions.
• Kerry continues to do project 365, although has tended to update her blog in sporadic bursts rather than day by day.
• I tidied the lounge. It took me two entire days.
• The final total raised by the Dales Walk has come in. It’s over six thousand pounds. Thank you to everyone who donated.
• I fluctuated wildly from missing blogging desperately to vowing never to blog again. I think that I’m going to try and strike a happy medium between those two poles.

So now I’m back, and as it’s the first of December I thought I might as well reinstate last year’s advent colander. Unfortunately I haven’t yet given any thought to what the theme of it should actually be. Last year I focused on Kid’s TV merchandising, any requests/suggestions for this year?

I participated last year, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I posted every single day of November and was pretty proud of myself for doing so. It’s good to force the creativity sometimes; it takes you in directions you hadn’t thought of before.

But often forcing it can be damaging too. It can cause rips, tears, and general discomfort. And sometimes, when you look at what you’ve produced you’re not particularly proud of it.

I’ve been forcing it for a while now. Probably since the end of the walk back in July.

So instead of posting every day of November I’m going to not post every day of November. I’m going to watch some films, read some books, and get a bit more sleep instead.

This isn’t a proclamation that I’m quitting. I’m going to be back in December. I’m just going to have a bit of a break so when I come back my blog movements will be a little more fluid. I’m still going to be around other people’s blogs too, although perhaps not quite as much as I have been. I’ll still be answering email ( dghughes28(at)yahoo.co.uk ) and hanging around instant messaging (AIM username: dghughes28 ) so feel free to look me up.

And don’t forget, you can still get a daily dose of life in the Hughes household over at my wife Kerry’s blog: CeleryJam.com.

See you in December.

Note to self: Laptops and children jumping on the bed do not mix. I might not be around much for a little while.

My levels of excitement were maintained throughout the first three quarters of season 1. Sure the program had faults: everyone was far too good looking, the plot crawled along at a snails pace, and I felt like punching Peter Petrelli firmly in the nose. But I put up with it, just happy to see a superhero show that was accepted in the mainstream.

But then suddenly about two or three episodes before the season finale I had an epiphany - Heroes actually isn’t very good.

Certainly the program is well made (although the dialogue leaves a little to be desired), but unfortunately it falls victim to the malady affecting most modern genre shows these days: the obsession with having a conspiracy based meta-plot.

Ever since The X Files science fiction producers and script writers have been obsessed by crowbaring their own version of The Smoking Man into their programs. It drives me completely bananas. I find conspiracy’s very boring and manipulatively drip feeding snippets of one out over twenty odd episodes is a sure fire way of losing my interest in a show.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have a nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that the writers have no bloody clue what they are doing.

In the hight of X Files mania fans used to regularly chant their mantra of The Truth is Out There; believing that the program’s creator Chris Carter had a grand vision as to where the show’s mythology was going. Of course we know now that he didn’t have a clue. As the seasons progressed the various conspiracies got so tangled and convoluted that even the most dedicated viewer had a hard time keeping track of what was going on. The show eventually disappeared up it’s own anus, leaving behind only a slight whiff of disappointment and nostalgia for what it could have been.

I loved The X Files. I loved the characters, I loved the premise, and I loved the script writing. But the meta plot ruined it. Not in the first three seasons; no, they were great; but it ruined it eventually and I can’t help feeling that is what is going to happen to Heroes.

Too much of Heroes depends on the ongoing story, there just isn’t enough emphasis on an episode being self contained. And although it may not seem like it, it is possible to have both. You can have your cake and eat it too. Just look at the Whedonverse: Buffy, Angel, Firefly - all shows with metaplots, but with a clear individual episode integrity. Great stuff.

And while I’m ranting I’ll tell you something else I didn’t like about Heroes: The ending to the first season. Twenty two bloody episodes I sat through hoping to see some good old fashioned superhero battles. Twenty two episodes. We got a tantalizing glimpse of how glorious a super ruckus could be when Peter and Sylar were fighting in the episode set in the future, and boy was it exciting. So come episode twenty three I was anticipating a special effects laden royal rumble of epic proportions. And what did I get? A big pile of steaming anticlimactic pants, that’s what I got.

Bah, humbug.

In the interests of full disclosure I should perhaps point out that I’ve only actually seen the first season of Heroes. Kerry has seen the second one, she watched it while I was wrecking my feet doing the Dales Walk. I plan to get round to it too eventually, but from what I’ve heard I doubt I’m going to be overly enamored. Still, I’ve still got the Animated adventures of Batman to sate all my small screen superhero needs. That should keep me going for a while.