RIP

This weekend wasn’t the best for me.  I’ll likely talk more about most of it later.

Because today I found out that Yaffa Phillips died.

(I know that none of you knew Yaffa, but I didn’t want to just refer to her using pronouns.)

I met Yaffa at an event called Boro Tweetup.  I liked her immediately, which, to be honest, wasn’t hard to do.  She was funny, geeky, creative and energetic.

Like me, she was an outsider who fell in love with Teesside.  She was from New York and moved over to marry someone she met on IRC.  And she did love the area, it wasn’t just because she ran the Love Middlesbrough social media accounts.  She genuinely loved the place.

She loved live music.  I’d often get messages telling me about gigs or offering tickets.  I’d also randomly bump into her at events.

We weren’t close friends, but we did keep in touch online.  Last time I saw her was when I volunteered to let her take pictures with me in them to promote the town.  Yaffa was her usual energetic self, running around convincing people tonket her take pictures of their pets and corralling businesses into helping her.  It was a fun afternoon.

Fuck cancer.

Three things I’ll remember her for:

– Her smile.  It would brighten up any room and was never anything but genuine.

– Hats.  Funny hats, to be exact.  Rarely did you meet her on a night out where she didn’t have silly headgear.  When I’m able to post pics here again, I’ll post one of my favourite pics of me.  I’m wearing a white shirt, suit jacket, bow tie and Christmas tree headband.

– Dreidels.  Yaffa was Jewish, so every year at the Christmas Boro Tweetup she would bring her box of dreidels and let us play with them.

RIP Yaffa Phillips.  You were, are and always will be loved and you are and always will be missed.

Will