I have allowed myself to get sucked into Clarkson’s Farm. I’m surprised but it has drawn me in completely. His personality is familiar to me. And the way he gets stuck in while being clueless. He might be punchy but I get his noise. Watch this space for, ah whatever I can pitch… Barclay’s Ridiculous Unplanned DangerTravel…
I can’t talk about danger though. On Brian’s suggestion I have downloaded an app that tells me when there’s an air raid in Kyiv. “It’s a weird equivalent of those lights you can touch that light up on it other side of the world” This evening the siren went off and I spoke to Brian. “Yeah I know it’s crap, I’ve just ordered a burger.”
He was in his hotel. He chose to stay up and have his burger. Better die immediately than get trapped under the rubble. Wherever the missiles were felled / fell he could hear the explosions. I think it’s brilliant and mad. When he told me he was going my reaction was “It’s hotter in Gaza”.
I’ve done it before but Brian is sharing his Ukraine stuff on a WordPress here. https://brianhook0.wordpress.com/2024/05/24/journey-to-ukraine-exploring-art-stories-and-cultural-resilience/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3dneOejhuXmCrcDZRM8YFrDuaqW1qUFAstCo1YznOXTrs4aDz8Y0fBURw_aem_AQnBLWL4_W9J2qSNyvdQbk231D3iZhgcV7ZmPoCJ5ZMkz8zwGWXZD_ZslyvlxYI-V8DTjEwBTZmZPMlEJWlCfujw
I am proud of him for being bonkers and doing this. The air alert app is brilliantly voiced by Mark Hamill, and when he gives you the all clear he says “May the force be with you”. I’m happy to have the possibility of being woken up by a siren and Luke Skywalker so I can stay in touch with the hook while he is on his travels. And I like that the app uses the idea of “the force” which was something a lot of us used as a cultural touchpoint for how we intuited the universe worked. Until the new episodes fucked it by bringing in midichlorian particles.
This is another all over the place blog but I’m tired. I’ve only been line learning but there’s loads of them to learn and very little time.
AlBarclay 