Offside Report on Barwick Green
by Mukul
Wow what a feeling, and a great big shout to John Rutherford. The scenario, the UK is imploding politically and economically, UN peacekeepers are arriving to the hotbed of revolution, but we going to a game but a rural little village in sleepy England, think the Archers radio show.
Most players are the villagers with some political agendas and most certainly with personal feuds and some objectives that are personal and political and possibly petty.
One player is a Translator and cultural local expert from Browning Street Walworth, South London hired by the UN who actually knows not so much about about this sort of village.
Another player is a the commander of a small platoon of UN soldiers from a country with pretty different cultural values, who also cant speak the local language. This was played by John and was very alien and he simply had to trust his translator and use body language. He had headphones on that blocked the sounds of the game except for the translator.
The game is about..well a few things. But the layer that shouted out to me, was the clash of cultures. The feeling was a like hammer coming down from heaven and interfering in our way of life. It gave an emotional insight into a feeling that i never had. There were other layers like the way we tried to start using the UN to solve feuds, the yay the Un tried to locate who was important in the town., (human geography).
Its a bit strange but the game remined of a book called Naples 44 by Norman Lewis a memoir of Field Security Officer in Naples in 1944, which looks an occupation or alien administration from a weird angle.
– mukul