Bruce Lawson's personal site

Q: What do you call a French man wearing plastic sandals?
A: Phillippe Philloppe.

Marina has a blog, thanks to a slightly adapted version of Kawaiichan‘s splendid Rainbow Town theme.

She mocks me that I didn’t have my own blog when I was nine.

Last night, Nong and I went out with our mates Pete and Rachel to Birmingham’s Gay and Lesbian Pride, and took some groovy photos.

It’s five years since I’ve been city-centre revelling on a Saturday night, and much as I enjoyed it, it’ll be another five until I do it again: the crowds, the bouncers, the endless wait to be served are all too much for an old fart like me—and that’s without the feral atmosphere when the place is full of lagered-up straight teen men.

I was tidying up my bookcases I found my dog-eared copies of The Spectacular Times pocketbooks, a series written by Larry Law as an accessible introduction to situationist thinking, and rediscovered this momentous quote from Raoul Vaneigem:

People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.

A man goes to the doctors with a sore knee.
The doctor says, “You’ll have to stop masturbating”.
“But why?” asks the man.
The doctor replies, “Because I’m trying to examine you”.

Readers from abroad might not be aware that England has been experiencing freak weather conditions for the past four days:

• It’s not snowing
• It’s not even raining
• The sky is full of this pale yellow disc causing double-digit temperatures

In short, it looks like summer might be upon us. It’s not possible to be definitive because, like a Big Yellow Taxi, summer can only be properly diagnosed once it’s gone—so after the mists of June, the squalls of July and the fogs of August we might look back at early May and realise that, yes, that was the summer.

It certainly has all the hallmarks:

• English people stop moaning about the rain and moan about the heat
• The air smells of barbeque charcoal and burning meat
• White Englishmen walk around in public with no shirt on

The last sign is something to be deplored. White English men are chiefly characterised by a concave chest and skin so translucent that, if you hold them up to the light, you can actually see intestines peristalsing fish and chips around.

Every schoolboy knows that on two occasions this dazzling translucence has saved our scepter’d isle: the Spanish Armada and Luftwaffe were repelled by every Englishman baring his chest simultaneously at the command of Queen Elizabeth and Winston Churchill respectively, thereby blinding the enemy captains and pilots and forcing a retreat.

Thereby, I make a plea at this time that may be summer: gentlemen, keep your shirts on. The balmy twenty degrees may compel you to bare your lily white pigeon-chests in a courtship ritual, but your country needs you to avoid a tan.

Thank you.

(Last Updated on 14 May 2008)