After a number of successful years working for an appliance manufacturer, Hugh took his chance to become a full-time house husband.
Living in a semi-detached house in the suburbs outside York, he devours this morning’s sidoku whilst effortlessly sweeping away the mock earthquake generated by his three children, aged 6, 3 and 18 months. His wife, Cloudscape, works for a legal firm in town. He is a chef par excellence, and prepares curries, casseroles and coq-au-vin made from the finest locally sourced food available. He often selects organic, but gets uncharacteristically riled when produce which should, in theory, be more environmentally friendly, actually comes with extra trays and plastic wrappers, and you can never select what you want from the open section, taking instead a gamble on the ripeness. He laments how distanced people are from their food.
Hugh idolises his kids, and in a period of eco-altruistic optimism, he installed a solar pv panel on the roof, meanwhile switching to energy saving light bulbs throughout the house. The water butt sees that his courgettes and tomatoes get the benefit of rainwater and he used recycled building materials for his handcrafted compost bin. The family regularly enjoy a weekend road trip into the Yorkshire Dales, but Hugh can’t find any information about the embodied energy in new cars, so doesn’t know whether it’s best to replace his old Volvo.
