A NORTH-EAST woman is celebrating after winning a prize in a farmers' writing competition.

Freda Phalp, of Great Ayton, scooped the £50 prize in the annual Farmers' Weekly Frater Memorial writing contest.

The theme for this year's competition was "A Kind Deed" and Ms Phalp wrote about the kindness a shopkeeper showed to her retired father who was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.

He was prone to wander off, and frequently made for the fruit shop under the town hall in the nearby small market town.

The owner of the fruit shop got to know the elderly man and on several occasions brought him home or telephoned his wife to let her know his whereabouts.

Ms Phalp recalled how one bitterly cold day, just before Christmas one year, her father disappeared and her mother rang the fruit shop but he had not been seen.

Half an hour later, the woman from the fruit shop arrived at the front door with a hamper of fruit and her father in tow.

Knowing that he did not have any money with him, Ms Phalp's mother asked the woman how much she owed. The modern-day fairy godmother replied: "Nothing. He's been Christmas shopping for your present, on the house. Happy Christmas."

Ms Phalp said there are not many smiles when Alzheimer's strikes, but at least that Christmas, in the early nineties, there was a little ray of sunshine in her parents' small bungalow.