Pandemic Food Ways :: A Little Sweet Treat

March 7, 2025March 1, 2025 | Sheree

This piece was originally published on Medium with Binderful back in 2020. I’m sharing this piece here because I was reminded that it existed over there when I made some crackers and jam this morning. It was good to revisit it. I share it with you now.

During these quarantined times with Covid-19, I’m trying to find way to support my well-being. I’m making sure I take the time and space to tune into my needs and wants, beside those of my family. I’m finding joy and memories in my day when I make solitude. This happens, usually in the morning, when I make my breakfast. It’s nothing fancy either. Its crackers and jam and black decaf coffee. The plain taste of the hard crackers against the sweet soft stickiness of raspberry jam (no seeds) is divine. This is a little sweet treat and takes me back to two moments in time.

The first is childhood. Crackers and jam was weekend breakfast when I was a kid. Dad would bring it to our bedroom, my sister and me, and we were allowed to eat them in bed. Crackers and jam is a poor man’s breakfast. But when I ate them as a child, I felt rich. I felt like a princess. I felt loved. Especially because my dad made it. A harsh Trinidadian man who ruled us with beats but who I idolised and always wanted to love me more. These Saturday mornings, tucked up in bed, I felt cosy and safe. As children most of our days were spent inside, with our imaginations and Enid Blyton. And this felt good. Now with my daughter, there isn’t any Enid Blyton more like David Walliams, but there‘s a generous amount of storytelling as we stay safe indoors. Learning from my childhood, when I received anger and beats for questioning why, our kids have been brought up wonder out loud and to receive a reason or answer rather than that feeling of saying or doing something wrong.

The second memory around crackers and jam takes me back to my first artist residency in Iceland. This would be my second time back to the island but the first time remaining in place, the remote Westfjords, for two weeks. Surrounded by white upon white. With the cold biting at all exposed flesh, I searched for any familiar signs, in the landscape, because I felt lost and adrift. I didn’t know why or what I was doing miles away from home, alone, in residence pretending to be an artist. I remember making crackers and jam and coffee one morning, knee deep in my unhinged being and remembering who I was. Memories came back about being a little girl craving love and safety and comfort. And how even though, I’d a harsh upbringing, in some respects, I know discipline and perseverance and self-preservation were forged then.

I suppose this mirrors how I feel and be now, in these uncertain times, and how making crackers and jam satisfies these urges and needs and fuels my desire to survive and thrive.

An Ode to the Black Woman

March 1, 2025March 1, 2025 | Sheree

An Ode to The Black Woman

Noticeboard – What’s happening today?

March 1, 2025 | Sheree

Morning routine done. Still completing my rituals before I greet the world.

Decided to add 2 more to the list so I can complete some stuff I want and don’t want to do this month.

One is to continue to add to my wall for my fugitivity essay. Two, tackle one task per day for completion of my counselling skills course.

Guess which task is the one I don’t want to do?

Completed reading the ebook, In the Cut by Susanna Moore. And I’m not going to spoil it for you but I just didn’t see the ending coming. I was reading this after reading an article with Susanna Moore speaking with Allison P. Davis and it was exploring writing about sex and murder. Somethings I’m considering writing about. So I thought I better read the novel. Let’s just say it’s an interesting read and I think I was expecting more sex! Call me greedy!

Went out for a walk and was remembering my drive home yesterday in the sunshine. Reminded of how being with Kiwi, and our on adventures is my happy place. More!

Returned home and forgot to post some stuff so had to go back out. And Tynemouth is heaving today because the sun is out and it’s the weekend and it’s station market day. I tend to avoid the crowds at the coast and head in the opposite direction but today I did not mind the people as I felt like I belonged.

Not belonged here. But belonged within my body.

There’s a difference.

I’ve found another happy place

February 26, 2025 | Sheree

Photowalk- Glenmore Forest

February 25, 2025 | Sheree

It’s been a while since I’ve taken you on a photowalk. With the nights getting lighter, and being away in Kiwi, I felt the urge to watch the sun go down over Loch Morlich.

When Kiwi and I were coming back from Glencoe in the New Year, we planned to stop off at Loch Morlich on route but it had snowed and more forecast. I’d never been to the loch before so I erred on the side of caution promising myself that we would return some other time.

That’s a practice of mine. To not run around like a blue arsed fly trying to fit everything in/ see/do everything but to leave something to come back for. A reason to return.

We were due to return to Loch Morlich in January but after my fall, I postponed it till this week.

So here we are parked up at Glenmore Campsite nestled in Glenmore Forest and kissing Loch Morlich.

Of course I’ve already been in the loch and it was fucking cold. I was tingling with renewed life afterwards though.

Enough energy therefore to take you on a photowalk as the evening draws in.

Enjoy because I know I did!

Abhainn Ruigh-Eurachan flowing into Loch Morlich

On the road again

February 24, 2025 | Sheree

For years, I used to travel into Scotland, maybe with work in Dunbar or Edinburgh, and stop off on route at this beach, Thorntonloch Beach.

It’s nothing spectacular, apart from stretching out at the feet of Torness Power Station, but it would be a good place to stop and stretch my legs and calm my spirit.

I remember stopping there on my first trip to Iceland and being all giddy as I watched the waves roll in. That was May 2016.

I say all this because for the last few years and the last few trips across the border, I haven’t stopped and walked this beach.

I do not know why. Maybe I didn’t want to step back into a former Sheree. Maybe I didn’t want the hassle of sand in my toes. Or maybe I just didn’t register why I really used to stop at this beach.

I used to stop at this beach, to just be. To breathe. To be present.

And this time as I skip across the border, I pull over, park up and just be with the beach and sea.

The Message

February 23, 2025 | Sheree

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

Darling, you were never too much. You were only too big and too bold to those who couldn’t see their own light.

Baby, you were never too much. Your cup overflowed in ways that the parched could not understand

Honey, you were never too much. You were always just right.

Rules, timetables and regulations

February 22, 2025 | Sheree

What bores you?

When my sixth form tutor advised me when I said I wanted to be a teacher, that I’d be better off serving in a shop, I felt I needed to prove him wrong.

That I could be a teacher and a good one at that. I studied hard, got to Uni, struggled financially and to dropped out to gain employment. But that didn’t work out, so I returned to complete the degree and then went on to train at the Institute of Education in Secondary English and Geography.

I had to prove that tutor wrong but I also had to be a positive role model for kids who looked like me; brown and black students.

So inner city London teaching was where I got my first teaching job. I didn’t realise the school was under space measures as a failing school. Every term we were inspected to make sure we improved and got out of special measures. But I loved it as I felt as if I was making a difference.

With my rose- tinted spectacles still on, I didn’t realise I was propping up a system with its purpose to create factory fodder rather than free-thinking individuals.

Fast-forward to teaching in the north east with curriculum responsibility. Actually teaching in the same school I went to as a kid. Some of the teachers who used to teach me were still there including that sixth form tutor who said I would be better off working in a shop.

I showed him he was wrong.

But I also realised during this period, that I was wrong. I was in the wrong career. Not only was the hours long and tasks never ending. Not only was there a distinct lack of creativity.

But I was bored and frustrated by all the rules, timetables and regulations. Basically at every point or time in the school day, everyone knew where to find me. In the same classroom teaching the same stuff. Life was controlled by the bells and the timetable never changed from each week to the next.

I was bored and when I tried to bring in some fun and excitement by inviting guests and creatives, I was told that this is not the way to teach. It’s just not done that way.

I was dying from the inside out. Little pieces of my soul were being eaten away from the rules, the controls, the regulations. I had to go.

I jumped ship without a net and suddenly I was no longer bored but full of wonder and curiosity and fear of the unknown but so much more energy for life. And willingness to explore.