Fi Phillips

My parents on the left with me as a baby. When my mother died (my father had passed away a few years before that), I felt cast adrift. I was married with a family of my own but I had always looked to my parents as an example to guide me. It felt as if they had been on the rung above me on the ladder and now they had stepped off, leaving me to be at the top. If I'm honest, it took me a couple of years to become accepting of, if not comfortable with, my rung on the family ladder but I got there. I realised that to be happy with my rung, I had to own it and become my own parent. In writing, we can sometimes lose our connection with what we create. Perhaps we're embarrassed to share it with others. Maybe we think we're not talented enough to call ourselves a 'writer'. We despair at the lack of time in our lives to write or how everything else seems to be more important (common excuses here are our children, the housework and getting enough sleep). We leave our cre...

This is my mum with her great friend, Sarah Brinkman. Sarah and her husband, Billy lived in the area where my mother was raised. They'd been farmers until Billy decided that enough was enough. They bought a plot of land in Kirkstall and Billy, almost by himself, built their house. When my grandmother Maud died and my grandfather Alfred fell into a deep depression, it was the Brinkmans who helped mum and her new fiance (my father) to pick up the pieces. Sarah and Billy were as different as a ham joint and a loaf of bread but equally they went together wonderfully. Billy was a short, quiet man who spent much of his time in the garden. That's the place I always remember him, tending to his flowerbeds while my father and he exchanged tips on growing vegetables. Sarah was the joker of the pair, an entertainer with a constant smile, a laughing light in her eyes and a well stocked larder. She always had more than sufficient supplies in to feed an army. When I picture her in my mi...

Food, glorious food. And no, I don't mean the song. Is it any wonder that we try so hard to lose weight in the run up to Christmas when the day (ok, the week that starts around Christmas Eve) is almost as much to do with what we'll eat and drink as it is about what presents we'll give? My father worked for Rowntrees in York. If you haven't heard of the name (in which case you probably don't eat sweets), Rowntrees was a manufacturer of chocolates and other confectioneries. It is now owned by Nestle who have usurped the name, using their own instead. Dad  would regularly bring home boxes of seconds, chocolate bars and the suchlike that hadn't made the grade (I especially remember Cabana bars that had too much caramel in them) but at Christmas, his order would extend to include nuts, biscuits, and a powdered drink in a tin that fizzed up when you added water. There would always be a tin of Quality Street which when opened was a delight in itself with all the ...

The first part of most people's Christmas day (not all, I admit) is the ritual of opening presents - checking the tags, handing them out to the right people, then ripping off the paper with cheerful abandon. Gift giving has become one of the main elements of the festive season - writing a list of what you'd like, planning what you'll get everyone and how much you can spend, looking out for bargains in the shops, buying the gifts themselves, wrapping them, arranging them around the tree (after first hiding them in a cupboard or wardrobe for a couple of weeks), handing them out and opening them. As parents, we can feel especially pressured into following this routine. We want our children to adore their presents so we spend more and more on them. My parents were just the same. I'd get the "We can't afford as much this year" speech at the beginning of every December and yet I'd still have a pile of presents on the day. Of course, we'd spend Januar...