Fi Phillips

Have you heard of National Poetry Day? If not, here's the explanation of what it's all about: "National Poetry Day is the nation's biggest celebration of poetry. Everyone is joining in, releasing poetry into the streets, squares, supermarkets, parks, train stations, bus-stops and post-boxes. We know of poetry police, poetry funeral directors, poetry ambulances. Add yourselves to the ever-growing list by tying verse on trees, to make a poet tree. Or stick it in your window for the world to see. This year's theme is Remember, so if you remember a poem, however short, pass it on with a hashtag #thinkofapoem." You can find this explanation and more details on the Forward Arts Foundation website. This week also sees my late father's birthday so the theme of 'remember' seems very appropriate. My father was a well read man, a lover of theatre and a great fan of Robbie Burns so the poem that I remember and share today is 'To a Mouse'. M...

When my father was seventeen years old, something happened to him that would change the course of his life. This was 1939, the first year of the second world war. My father, like many young men at the time, felt sure he would play some part in fighting for his country. Older men were already leaving the community to enlist. He and his friends all looked forward with mixed feelings to the following year when they would leave their small home town in Scotland. Unlike his father who was employed on the estate of the local castle as a gardener, my dad was a lathe worker at a pipeworks factory. He had left school with few qualifications and saw his future as a continuation of his family's roots. He would work, marry, and have children. That was his path. The thought of moving away (other than to fight in the war) did not occur to him. Then it happened. An obstacle fell across his path, an obstacle which refused to let him find a way round. Due to his work, his hands became infecte...

My father was a serious man. He wasn't cold or unfeeling. He loved my mother and me deeply but living through hard times had created a quiet reticence in him. A teenage injury at the start of the second world war had left him in almost constant pain, not that he asked for or expected pity, quite the opposite. His normal expression was a frown. He had what you would call a furrowed brow. Amid his serious mood though, certain things would bring an understated smile to his lips - his family, jazz music, the sight of a Scottish landscape. What was rarer was to hear him chuckle. Rarer still was the sight of my father laughing so much that tears washed down his face. The comedy duo, Morecambe and Wise were one of the few things that reduced him to this state. They were a straight man (Ernie Wise) and a funny man (Eric Morecambe). Both worked incredibly hard to acquire not only fame but a place in the hearts of the British public. Ernie was constantly at the mercy of his taller compa...

My father worked long hours, Monday to Friday, leaving the house at seven or eight, returning long after the child I was had fallen asleep. On a Saturday, my mother would take advantage of his presence for a weekly shop, a drive in the country or a family visit to her friends in Leeds. Only on a Sunday, did my father have time that he could call his own. Every Sunday, he would rise from his bed around six, pulling trousers and a jumper over his pyjamas, then he would leave my mother wrapped in her dreams. Downstairs he would turn on the stereo. Shaped like a sideboard, the stereo was large, teak and bore two in-built speakers, one on each side. Beneath a lid sat a radio and a turntable. He would click the switch to 78, choose a record from his collection, then while the music wound around the lounge, he would prepare breakfast for himself. While my mother and I slept, he would reintroduce himself to Ella Fitzgerald , Ma Rainey and Pearl Bailey . Louis Armstrong was always a favouri...

Back in April, I wrote about missing my mum on Mother's Day . Today is Father's Day. My husband is enjoying a well deserved lie in and my children are busy so I'm taking this time to be quiet and get some writing done. My dad died two days after my daughter was born. It was unexpected and more numbing than shocking. One came in and another went out - joy and sadness in equal measures. I miss my father, especially our conversations. We would happily talk the world to rights. We'd disagree sometimes, even argue, but my father never let the sun go down on a row. He would always make sure we were friends before we went to bed - even when we lived at different ends of the country. Not long after we'd moved to our new life in Wales, I was attempting to get my children into the car for school one morning. "No, don't do that to your brother. And you leave her alone as well. Please sit down. Seat belts people!"  I had my 'get on with it' goggles on,...

Monday was the birthday of my late father, Charlie. He would have been 88 years old. That's him in the photo, standing in a street in York with my mum. He was an ever supportive influence in my life, softly spoken, strong, thoughtful and eternally optimistic. He was probably better thought of and more kindly remembered that he realised. He was a hard worker, my dad. He was also a dreamer, full of ideas and thoughts. He did his best to improve himself so that he could support his family which often meant we only saw him at weekends, a treasured forty eight hours when family time was spent out walking, maybe driving in the countryside, or in the garden. A country lad at heart, my father usually found a way to drag us out into nature. When he retired, my father decided to research his family history. I can remember the trips he took to London and Edinburgh (sometimes with my mum and on other occasions alone) and holidays spent traipsing through overgrown graveyards in Scotland. ...