Bruno Cooke's Blog

HI team. Long time no post. This week, I have been snorkelling and eating really good Chinese food, meeting people with unlikely connections to Torquay, and reading about gnosticism and artificial intelligence. I plan to write here, again, in not too long, with more detail and more fun. My tummy is also rumbling over a […]

Hi team Thanks for sticking with me. Much on which to report, and caffeine on which to report it. A week ago today – on 4 May 2024 – I finished a 24-day massage therapy course at TTC Massage, Bangkok, under the tutelage of Brendan, Alissa, Duang and Nita. Launching into this was fairly premeditated, but also, […]

Hi everybody. There are two more pieces to read in my Substack publication, My Special Interest. ‘Ceremony of Innocence’ (readable here) takes its name from W B Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’. It’s a chonky essay about the origins of astrology and astronomy, and archaeological evidence that suggests (often very strongly) that human beings have […]

Hello, team. I have launched a publication on Substack. The name of the publication My Special Interest. The idea is to get sh*t on the page, or get whatever’s already on the page out into the open. Otherwise it will sit and gather dust, and My Special Interest is not about gathering dust. It is about the […]

People going through things, I salute you. Here’s a short poem. The train to Kampot has teal cushionsbut you might call them green, or blue.On its way out of town it passesall the colours and flavours of Phnom Penh:a critical mass of scooters and remorques,old men poking around in heaps of plastic,women in patterned skirts […]

Quick intro: This is a poem I wrote a long time ago. Like, 10 years ago. I was 19, a spring chicken, and on my very first bicycle tour (London – Paris – Luxembourg City – Aachen – Maastricht – Brussels – Calais – London), which I was not psychologically prepared for but which I […]

With chainmail leggings and an Iron Shirtor a faux leather catsuit. Clean wet dirt to coat his skin. No need for a gun:an elephant wetted against the sun.  Cardboard armour in concertinasand kevlar, fat with carabiners.  Two-litre bottles sliced into tubes(but so they didn’t catch he used water-based lube), holes plugged with Extra. He filled […]

Vladimir Putin but not riding a bearVolodymyr Zelenskyy, two Ys, getting spellings right, that Yale lecturer who talks about Ukrainian history, Timothy Snyder – or Snider?The Syrian leader with the forehead, Assad, no, his father Assad, very top-heavyConservative MPs Damian Green and Bob Stewart, of Ashford and Beckenham respectivelyMy old MP was a doctor, she was […]

Dense with deep brown air,coldness emanating from within.Beast belly brooding, brewing. One for every two hundred and seventy-four thousand, two hundred and twenty-two people, give or take. Call them oases or corporate quagmires,spaces you can be dressed in more than a T-shirt.Feel your breath be conditioned as it leaves;rub shoulders with the twin-tailed mermaid. Lower yourself into darkness, […]

Written some time ago with my brother, Inigo I want a large macchiato, 2 lattes,sweet and salty popcorns,979 big or fat apricots with stacks of corned beef pie, hot tortilla cut in circles,omelettes 50 by 8 furlongs deep,a blackberry crumble,a garlic ciabattaand dumplings. FYI: there’s something to ‘get’ here, but I don’t want to spell it out, […]