Harry's Blog

My day job is holding the role of editor for a successful commercial videogames website. I spend quite a lot of my time talking to publishers and third-party PR reps who handle the promotion of their portfolio of games.

The vast majority of these PR bods are very knowledgeable and also work hard to make sure they get their game mentioned in the press as much as possible. Sites like the one I run do receive review copies of the latest games, and contrary to popular opinion are not badgered into giving good reviews. However publishers do expect their review copies to go to good homes.

After all, there's no point sending a disk to some tiny website with three readers. And while the disks themselves aren't really worth anything the time PR people spend dealing with you is expensive. I know from personal experience that you need unique readership figures in the tens of thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands, to expect to do business with certain games publishers.

Which makes my new experience in the realm of what we'll call "mummy blogging" all the more odd. The PR reps that deal with mummy bloggers are clearly completely out of their mind. I constantly see bloggers being offered free foreign holidays and expensive baby equipment despite probably having a readership of a few hundred unique visitors a day (and I'm being generous there).

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Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q80wfAzeRKA

Now this is one great sports video.

Les Paul Neck, originally uploaded by Harry Neary.

My new Epiphone Les Paul guitar.

Photo taken with an Canon EOS 5 using Ilford HP5 400 Plus. Lens Tamron 70-200m f2.8.

Patrick and Kitty have decided to put their sun hats on this morning, with their Bob the Builder helmets over the top.

Right now they are running around saying, "Two hats, Two hats."

Except it sounds exactly like they are saying "Twats, Twats."

o_O

Kitty tripped over a tent peg and hit her face on the decking in the garden yesterday. Cue lots of blood from a cut in her mouth and one hell of a bruise around one side of her face. It made me cry looking at her pretty little face so battered.

As expected the trip to the doctor was part medical visit, part interrogation.

How can a society with such completely shit social services - look at the baby-P case amongst many others - create a generation of scared parents worried about all the bruises toddlers inevitably pick up while leaping madly around?

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The twins love playing with their toy shopping trolley. You can often find one of them pushing it around, having filled it with a variety of multi-coloured plastic toys. Invariably they will announce they are going to the shops.

Kitty: Look dadda, shop.
Me: You're going to the shops sweetheart?
Kitty: Yes
Me: And what are you going to buy at the shops?
Kitty: BISCUITS

It's always biscuits, every single time they play shop and you ask them what they are going to buy or have bought - the answer is biscuits. We don't feed them on a diet of biscuits, honest, they may have one biscuit a day, often none. Yesterday my son was playing shop while Jo was out taking Kitty to see the doctor. Patrick was pushing the trolley around and I asked him what he was going to the shop for.

Patrick: Mummy's Tea and Daddy's tea

Bless him. Isn't that lovely. Not only has he broken the biscuit spell he's thought of us too.

Me: What are Mummy and Daddy having for tea then Pat?
Patrick: BISCUITS

Lovely.

Butter Wouldn't Melt, originally uploaded by Harry Neary.

Don't the twinnies look gorgeous? And so grown up too. They are in a totally adorable phase at the moment. Though that also brings many a moment of mischief.

Their speech is really coming on too. Sentences are getting longer week by week and their comprehension of what we tell them is improving rapidly too. It really is amazing watching your children grow up.

Neither can pronounce a hard C or the letter K yet though, once they manage that their speech is going to sound really impressive. Right now car is "char", but even that's adorable in its own way.

For the curious photophiles among you II shot this on black & white film. Yes actual film. Taken with a brilliant Canon EOS 5 SLR I bought for ?30 on Ebay, oh and a much more expensive Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 lens. The film? Ilford HP5 400.

Kitty and her Grandpa, originally uploaded by Harry Neary.

Our daughter is just over two years old but has clearly decided that she is a grown up. She points at other children, often ones a year or two older than her and declares, "Look Dad, a baby."

And that last quote brings up my main point for this post. For the last few weeks Kitty has been calling me Dad. I've got very used to being Daddy or Dadda especially as Kitty's voice¹ is so sweet and angelic.

Now I'm merely Dad. And while she's still the same tiny adorable flirt that ignores her mother's orders and attempts to wrap me around her little finger, something has changed.

Being called Dad makes me feel old in a way that Dadda or Daddy didn't. When I try to point this out to Kitty she just laughs at me like I'm an idiot.

_{¹At least her normal voice, not the one she uses for screeching "my toy" at her twin brother.}

There isn't a problem of immigration here in the UK. There's plenty of room and the economy could do with a boost from younger workers paying into the national coffers. But that doesn't stop a thin layer of scum floating to the surface of our nation politics whose agenda is based on fear and hatred. I speak of course of the British National Party (BNP) and to a lesser extend The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).

I used to work in Burnley and unfortunately that meant coming into contact with the local peasants who thought the BNP was a cause for celebration on a par with Robin Hood and his band of merry men. Burnley has a high number of Asian-owned businesses - companies run by families that have moved to the UK and worked hard for a better future for their families and in doing so also contributed greatly to our economy.

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Click the image to watch the video of our twinnies...

From Ring o Roses

After two rather nervous and exciting days we seem to have sailed into the wind's eye. Baby hasn't arrived and has stopped showing signs that he's about to. The midwife says that this is merely the calm before the storm and it's now a matter of days before we are parents of three children.

Following all the excitement of two days of contractions it does seem rather odd now for everything to have stopped asnd something like normal life returning. Now I know what it's like for the firemen of Trumpton when they race to a fire only to discover it's Chippy Minton's dinner burning.

Yes I am clearly tired. I'll go away now.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8076253.stm

Once again evil right wing fundamentalist crazies have proved why abortion should continue to legal. Because a world where they weren't allowed to be born would be a better world.