Matthew Sherrington
@msherrington.bsky.social
Charity consultant/coach (strategy, comms & leadership stuff). People Power, Quirks, Wows & Bitter Irony. It's all personal.
Top presidential trolling from the Oxford Times this week.
October 12, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Top presidential trolling from the Oxford Times this week.
And two more great holiday reads, both humorous mystery thrillers. Sweet Thames set in the sewers and slums of 1849 London; and The Proof of My Innocence, set of all places in the right-wing back rooms of Liz Truss’s premiership. Yep, still hard to believe that happened.
August 16, 2025 at 12:48 PM
And two more great holiday reads, both humorous mystery thrillers. Sweet Thames set in the sewers and slums of 1849 London; and The Proof of My Innocence, set of all places in the right-wing back rooms of Liz Truss’s premiership. Yep, still hard to believe that happened.
A couple of page-turning satires to kick the holidays off. The Trees, a ghoulish and gory revenge blood-fest, with Mississippi racists getting what’s coming to them. The Unfolding, a Bonfire of the Vanities for the MAGA era, as the white elitist American Dream falls apart, but plots its re-boot.
August 2, 2025 at 2:44 PM
A couple of page-turning satires to kick the holidays off. The Trees, a ghoulish and gory revenge blood-fest, with Mississippi racists getting what’s coming to them. The Unfolding, a Bonfire of the Vanities for the MAGA era, as the white elitist American Dream falls apart, but plots its re-boot.
What an indictment of decades of US federal, state and municipal action that deliberately segregated housing, denying generations of African Americans the opportunity of social mobility, and creating the economic inequality and injustice of today. The case for reparations, right here.
July 12, 2025 at 7:04 PM
What an indictment of decades of US federal, state and municipal action that deliberately segregated housing, denying generations of African Americans the opportunity of social mobility, and creating the economic inequality and injustice of today. The case for reparations, right here.
Written in 2017 after Tr*mp’s first presidential win, this short manifesto is more pertinent and compelling now, than ever, as tyranny cranks through the motions.
July 3, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Written in 2017 after Tr*mp’s first presidential win, this short manifesto is more pertinent and compelling now, than ever, as tyranny cranks through the motions.
Another wonderful move on the Vietnamese experience of war, a multi-generational epic from the pain and hunger of earlier Communist land reform and strife, through the loss and division caused by the American war.
July 3, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Another wonderful move on the Vietnamese experience of war, a multi-generational epic from the pain and hunger of earlier Communist land reform and strife, through the loss and division caused by the American war.
An extraordinary novel on the experience of The American War, as the Vietnamese call it. Brutality, horror, chaos, loss, trauma, the nostalgia of lost love. Bao Ninh was the only survivor from his unit of 500 men. His book was banned for undermining the glory of war.
June 14, 2025 at 2:51 PM
An extraordinary novel on the experience of The American War, as the Vietnamese call it. Brutality, horror, chaos, loss, trauma, the nostalgia of lost love. Bao Ninh was the only survivor from his unit of 500 men. His book was banned for undermining the glory of war.
50 years since unification and Vietnam is still defined largely by the war with the US. Good to have got a broader picture of the place - a history of multiple peoples, and Viet as well as French, communist and American imperial ambitions.
June 2, 2025 at 2:32 PM
50 years since unification and Vietnam is still defined largely by the war with the US. Good to have got a broader picture of the place - a history of multiple peoples, and Viet as well as French, communist and American imperial ambitions.
Leaving France behind.
June 2, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Leaving France behind.
Nice few days in France.
June 2, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Nice few days in France.
Finished Orbital in a metal tube at 38,000 feet, somewhere over Siberia, which I guess is apt; sunlight out of the right windows, darkness the left.
Breath-taking, I thought. A gentle but compelling meditation on existence, insignificance and meaning.
Breath-taking, I thought. A gentle but compelling meditation on existence, insignificance and meaning.
May 12, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Finished Orbital in a metal tube at 38,000 feet, somewhere over Siberia, which I guess is apt; sunlight out of the right windows, darkness the left.
Breath-taking, I thought. A gentle but compelling meditation on existence, insignificance and meaning.
Breath-taking, I thought. A gentle but compelling meditation on existence, insignificance and meaning.
Good morning from Hanoi. Vietnam flying the flags to mark 50 years of liberation of the south, and national unification. Work trip, jammy, eh?
May 7, 2025 at 6:21 AM
Good morning from Hanoi. Vietnam flying the flags to mark 50 years of liberation of the south, and national unification. Work trip, jammy, eh?
Seized the day. Frittata and cider mid-stream in a perfect quiet spot. Saw a kingfisher, heard a nightingale.
May 1, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Seized the day. Frittata and cider mid-stream in a perfect quiet spot. Saw a kingfisher, heard a nightingale.
Hard on its heels, Richard Wright’s moving memoir of growing up black, poor and hungry in 1920s Tennessee, and escaping the oppression of the South first in books, then on a train to Chicago. As the saying goes, survival is resistance.
April 29, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Hard on its heels, Richard Wright’s moving memoir of growing up black, poor and hungry in 1920s Tennessee, and escaping the oppression of the South first in books, then on a train to Chicago. As the saying goes, survival is resistance.
‘The epic story of America’s Great Migration’. Between the 1920s and 1970s millions of black Americans moved from the southern states to the northern cities.
More accurately, they fled the violence, racism and lynching of Jim Crow segregation, to find freedom.
More accurately, they fled the violence, racism and lynching of Jim Crow segregation, to find freedom.
April 26, 2025 at 8:28 PM
‘The epic story of America’s Great Migration’. Between the 1920s and 1970s millions of black Americans moved from the southern states to the northern cities.
More accurately, they fled the violence, racism and lynching of Jim Crow segregation, to find freedom.
More accurately, they fled the violence, racism and lynching of Jim Crow segregation, to find freedom.
Who wants to hear a nightingale?
Of course you do. Sound on.
Of course you do. Sound on.
April 11, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Who wants to hear a nightingale?
Of course you do. Sound on.
Of course you do. Sound on.
“We have been the dumb and helpless ‘whipping post’, but not any longer.”
Who knew the US has been the skinny weakling having sand kicked in its eyes and has just invested in a Charles Atlas chest expander.
Who knew the US has been the skinny weakling having sand kicked in its eyes and has just invested in a Charles Atlas chest expander.
April 5, 2025 at 4:04 PM
“We have been the dumb and helpless ‘whipping post’, but not any longer.”
Who knew the US has been the skinny weakling having sand kicked in its eyes and has just invested in a Charles Atlas chest expander.
Who knew the US has been the skinny weakling having sand kicked in its eyes and has just invested in a Charles Atlas chest expander.
For all the schadenfreude about the collapse in Tesla’s share price, it’s disappointingly only back to where it was before November’s US election six months ago. It’s a fickle world.
April 2, 2025 at 6:28 PM
For all the schadenfreude about the collapse in Tesla’s share price, it’s disappointingly only back to where it was before November’s US election six months ago. It’s a fickle world.
There’s nothing quite like a magnolia to say spring is here.
March 26, 2025 at 3:57 PM
There’s nothing quite like a magnolia to say spring is here.
Someone’s just shoved crap through my letterbox.
March 25, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Someone’s just shoved crap through my letterbox.
There’s an original CARE package in the office, a reminder of CARE’s history of solidarity, when the USA sent them into post-war Europe.
My Mum remembers getting them as a child, “every Christmas for at least five years. It was major excitement. Chicklets, rubber bands ... We loved it all.”
My Mum remembers getting them as a child, “every Christmas for at least five years. It was major excitement. Chicklets, rubber bands ... We loved it all.”
March 19, 2025 at 6:19 PM
There’s an original CARE package in the office, a reminder of CARE’s history of solidarity, when the USA sent them into post-war Europe.
My Mum remembers getting them as a child, “every Christmas for at least five years. It was major excitement. Chicklets, rubber bands ... We loved it all.”
My Mum remembers getting them as a child, “every Christmas for at least five years. It was major excitement. Chicklets, rubber bands ... We loved it all.”
Delighted and honoured to have joined the trustee Board of CARE International UK today.
Their work putting women and girls at the centre of their work and approach is so inspiring, and more critical than ever, in the face of looming aid cuts. We can’t let progress roll back. @careintuk.bsky.social
Their work putting women and girls at the centre of their work and approach is so inspiring, and more critical than ever, in the face of looming aid cuts. We can’t let progress roll back. @careintuk.bsky.social
March 19, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Delighted and honoured to have joined the trustee Board of CARE International UK today.
Their work putting women and girls at the centre of their work and approach is so inspiring, and more critical than ever, in the face of looming aid cuts. We can’t let progress roll back. @careintuk.bsky.social
Their work putting women and girls at the centre of their work and approach is so inspiring, and more critical than ever, in the face of looming aid cuts. We can’t let progress roll back. @careintuk.bsky.social
Hamlet at the RSC is brilliant, the set stunning (the good ship Elsinore, foundering like the Titanic), the cast incredible, and Luke Thallon just extraordinary. Absolutely gripping!
March 13, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Hamlet at the RSC is brilliant, the set stunning (the good ship Elsinore, foundering like the Titanic), the cast incredible, and Luke Thallon just extraordinary. Absolutely gripping!
A very sad day for us, having to say goodbye unexpectedly to our fluffy Oatly. A gorgeous, happy and friendly cat.
March 8, 2025 at 10:17 PM
A very sad day for us, having to say goodbye unexpectedly to our fluffy Oatly. A gorgeous, happy and friendly cat.
Brilliant book on how the history of slavery has been told, and literally whitewashed; and the axiom that history is told by victors. In this case, white supremacy.
”Just because someone tells you a story doesn’t make that story true.” As we should know from what now spews from the White House.
”Just because someone tells you a story doesn’t make that story true.” As we should know from what now spews from the White House.
March 8, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Brilliant book on how the history of slavery has been told, and literally whitewashed; and the axiom that history is told by victors. In this case, white supremacy.
”Just because someone tells you a story doesn’t make that story true.” As we should know from what now spews from the White House.
”Just because someone tells you a story doesn’t make that story true.” As we should know from what now spews from the White House.