Today, 1st June, is the start of meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere. 21st June will bring the Summer Solstice: the longest day and solar peak of the year.
I’ve got a love/ hate relationship with summer. While teaching, I couldn’t wait to get to the summer holidays, time off from school. But those 6 weeks always went far too fast. Maybe because I was trying to squeeze in as much as I could, as I was high on freedom.
These last few years, summer has been a more laid back kind of affair. But there’s still, sometimes, an underling tension of not doing enough. Not making the most of my days. Not being out when I think I should be. Not being in when I feel I should be. Sometimes, there can be a frenzied, frazzled energy where rest and relaxation is more of a performance than actually restoring my energy and inspiration levels.
May, June, July, August. Months of summer. Rising energies to the peak. The peak can either be superdeluxe and flourishing or too heady, overloaded and burnt out.
How do I want to experience this summer?
After months of stress and worries, GCSE’s, hustling and financial insecurities, I’m fixing for my summer to be calm and chill. Wholesome and good for my soul. Slow warm mornings, times to linger over coffee and a book. Feasting my eyes on beauty and questions to satisfy the Creatrix in me.
Siestas, sea dips and lake swims. New foods and drinks lingering on my tongue and heart. Scents of rose and peonies reminding me of childhood, ripe strawberries and juicy honeydew melon, tingling in my mouth. Reminds me that, I can slow down and soften. I can stretch out like a cat in the sun, cloudgaze, feel the warmth ease out the tensions and pressures, knowing that nothing lasts forever.
And yet, I’m grateful for being here now, savouring the now. Summer. Summer. Summer ( that High School Musical kind of vibe!)
I had the pleasure of gathering with the WOC Azadi again in Sheffield today.
We gathered to share ideas around how to plot/plotting our healings, our liberation together.
Visual journaling was on hand to capture our thoughts, feelings, plans and plots.
It was such a nurturing and nourishing space in nature. It was a gathering of hope and aspirations.
It was an honour to be part of the day retreat. Ideas for The Plot of Our Repair came about from a reading is Saidiya Hartman’s essay , The Plot of her Undoing (2020).
The plot of her undoing begins with his dominion. It begins in the fifteenth century with a papal bull, with a philosopher at his desk, pen in hand, as he sorts the world into categories of genus and species. It begins with a bill of sale, with a story in the newspaper that enumerates her crimes, with a note appended to the file: she answers questions easily, but appears stupid; it begins with a wanted poster that reduces the history of her life to a single word-condemned.
And then towards the end of this essay there is a switch. A turn to explore how we can undoing the plot of her undoing. How we can move against the forces aiming to ruin/ control/ oppress the black/brown woman.
The undoing of the plot proceeds by stealth. It is almost never recognized as anything at all and certainly never as significant.
…
It begins with the earth under her feet. It begins with all of them gathered at the river and ready to strike, with all of them assembled in the squatter city, with all of them getting ready to be free in the clearing.
The undoing of the plot begins with her runaway tongue, with her outstretched hands, with songs shared across the unfree territory and the occupied lands, with the pledges of love that propel struggle, with the vision that this bitter earth may not be what it seems.
The undoing of the plot, the plot developing towards our repair was started before us. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We continue this journey, this plotting together. Today makes me feel that we have already won.
Walking into North Shields the other day, walking towards the Fish Quay where there is now accessible access connecting the centre of town down to the River Tyne, I caught sight of this sculpture of Mary Ann Macham.
I first learned about Mary Ann in 2007, when I was researching the North-East’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade to mark the bicentenary of its abolition.
I was writer in residence within the Literary and Philosophical society, researching their tracts and unearthing the names and lives of the once enslaved people who passed through and/or settled here.
I wrote a poem about Mary Ann, her escape and travel up to the North, and with the help of the Quakers, made a life for herself through working in service and getting married and living in North Shields. This was back in 1831 when she arrived here and lived for a further 60+ years as a free woman.
An aside here is how the Quakers at the forefront of the abolition movement here in the North- East, were against the slave trade and worked for the abolition but still held the racist beliefs of the day that white people were still superior to black people.
Mary Ann Macham told her story to a member of the Spence family, who she was in service to. There’s a lot that can be argued about the practice of black people, telling their stories to white people who wrote them down and how accurate these are as a true representation of their stories. But this is all we have now as ‘evidence’.
African Lives in Northern England completed research on Mary Ann Macham before this public statue and the local groups ‘found’ her.
I should be grateful and overjoyed that finally Mary Ann Macham is being remembered. That there is a public statue dedicated to her and that she is being reclaimed as part of the local community.
But something just doesn’t sit well with me. Maybe I’m being far too critical. Or maybe I’m just coming at it from a black woman’s point of view living within white supremacy culture?
The press releases for this unveiling of the statue in November 2025, proceed to paint the impression that Mary Ann Macham has just been discovered. That this was hidden history that the locals have just uncovered and became fascinated with and had to find out more about. But unknown to whom?
If they had done their research they would have seen and also acknowledged the work completed in the past to shine a light on Mary Ann. But the story goes that they have just discovered her story. Or decided to just focused on only part of her story/life? Mary Ann Macham ( later Blyth through marriage lived until she was 92 years old).
The local Sculptor Keith Barratt who created the piece has said to the local media that he wanted this sculpture to show that “she came from a place of great pain, but it’s also a story of human liberation, of breaking the chains and I feel that this is something universal that many people will understand”.
I suppose I have issue with how Mary Ann is framed within the story of her own life, which she doesn’t have control over maybe a bit then but definitely not now with how she is remembered.
I Love North Shields has more details about her life and attempts to create a bigger picture of her life before enslavement and after as a free woman living her life here in the north east. But frequently it has to be argued, the majority of time, Mary Ann is trapped within the ‘slave’ narrative perpetuated by white people. Although seeing her as ‘brave’ for plotting her escape, they still frame Mary Ann, tell her story within the role of once enslaved, and needing the help and support of kind Quakers. Sounds a lot like white saviorism. Then and now.
It’s almost like Mary Ann is stuck, encased in bronze, and barefoot to symbolise the condition of slavery. Enslavement she escaped from physically during her life, but trapped forever within this role in memorial because the white imagination cannot see/ grant Mary Ann her full humanity . The fullness of her life.
Time and time again, the mainstream constructs the stories they want to shed a light on and tell about people of the global majority which suits the narratives they’ve been running for centuries. The narratives where we don’t have agency or self-definition but are the objects, less than and victims. This is a means of control and domination.
This is why it’s important that we take every opportunity to tell our own stories. To control our own narratives. To leave these as archives for the people that come after we so they can be in no doubt that we lived big, beautiful, full lives on our own terms.
And is it me, or does the statue of Mary Ann Macham make her look like she’s white?
Walking into North Shields to attend a useless ‘interview’, I gave thanks for the light after days of grey rain.
Walking and listening to music,and this song comes on and acts as a reminder.
I’ve been forgetting myself, forgetting who I come from.
What would my life feel like if I prioritised my creativity, always. That the risk taking I’m exploring in my creative sketchbook spread into my reality, my day to day life? What would my life feel like then?
Happy New Year. I’ve been wishing friends and family joy, peace and laughter for 2026. I include myself in these wishes too!
It had to be done.
My first intention for today was to start fresh and give myself a clean slate.
Going into the sea can be seen as a baptism – a washing away of 2025 with gratitude and a welcoming of 2026 with hope and excitement.
My second intention for today was to walk. Bitter cold but walk I did. I’m been letting this practice slide. I just haven’t bee arsed. But today I kept my intentions. I walked and paid attention.
I’m remembering the summer as well as archiving the events that went down @Earth Sea Love.
In August we managed to pull off a black women’s creative retreat. A weekend of creative camping in the middle of a forest. We cooked, and created, shared stories and slept under the stars. It was a magical time as we stepped out of time, to steal our lives back on our own terms. We laughed and cried and sang and walked and reconnected with ourselves, each other and nature.
I’ve just spent some time, updating the Earth Sea Love website with some events that took place over the summer, this retreat included because it’s important to have a record, an archives of these happenings. My heart and body remembers these days, these events because they have a profound effect on my {BEING}. Events like these reinforces everything that I {BE} and do for myself and others. And it is finding those ways of getting free, more often and for longer stretches of time.
This image above is of Pauline Mayers, one of the women to come on the retreat. And as you can see from her facial expression, and the sheer glow coming off her being, we had fun out there in nature together.
I’m now fixing to create more opportunities like this one. It was a dream come true, a dream started in a visual journal spread one day a few years ago. And who says dreams don’t come true. All you have to do is believe. Believe in yourself and the community around you and all will come to fruition.
Living Wild Studios 