NORWICH: When Simon Hooper, aka Father of Daughters visited Norwich
What a lovely, insightful, relaxed night with a super chilled and down to earth guy! Thank you Simon @father_of_daughters for coming all the way to Norwich and thank YOU everyone for coming!
Loved hearing about:
- how Simon juggles everything,
- how we can support our partners by asking how are they *actually* feeling,
- how Simon’s work deals with his fod alter ego,
- what support there is out there for dads (see @thedadnetwork - the Norfolk Facebook group has 600 dads in it),
- the challenges some dads face at work if they’d like to be more involved in family life to enable more balance between couples,
- the giggles of what he did and didn’t get spot on in Mr & Mrs (gave us an excuse to look at Ryan Gosling for a while, thanks to Clemmie for playing along),
- what it’s like to be recognised,
- how he met Clemmie,
- how he wrote a book on 4 hours sleep for months,
- how his family handled the arrival of his gorgeous twins,
- what the hardest bit it is right now (they like hiding, very quietly),
- how they managed the early days of sleepless nights,
- how he feels that he gives enough time to each daughter to actually find he’s more conscious of making time for his wife,
- the realities of bringing up school age children in a world of YouTube (on that, my friend said last night that there is a stat somewhere that when asked what career they want to do, 89% of kids say they want to be a YouTuber. We could have a skills shortage right?!),
- how he turns down 99.5% of advertising offers,
- honesty about how it is simply easier to be at home with four kids instead of the logistics of getting out alone with them.
There were real working parent struggles on the day, and I’m very grateful to the friend who stepped in for him so he could come! Simon even squeezed in a run in Eaton Park with Vickie from @inpolife for #inporunclub
******I’m very sorry you had such an awful journey home Simon...😬
Grateful thanks to @emsymarie @suzwilkinson @clare_angell @jrconstructionanglia @minorsgemma @55_avenue Very grateful to Sophie @muffinandpuffinmarketing for fab stories, , @opennorwich Get Me out the 4 Walls for being brilliantly profesh and @emilygrayphoto ❣️⭐
BIG thank you to @minivinowines for delicious wine that all our guests were able to take home.
All photographs below (except the instagram stories at the bottom!) are copyright from Charlotte at Emily Gray Photography - she is a fabulous photographer, totally unflappable and spot on! Book her for your family shoots or commercial work :-)
