Tag Archives: yyj

Writing prompt : the walls

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They sprinkle around the place, changing with the years like my life is marked by sections.  It’s an apartment in the morning before a shift.  I’m hardly a wealthy man but I’m less and less tolerant of posters.  I had one in a bathroom with a part torn for the light switch.  Far less acceptance of white walls then.  I accept them now.  The change in the sky colors against the bare slate of the bedroom above our heads.  It rumples soft peach over the folds of the strewn sheet.  It’s a good place to have coffee.  I need to go.  My cups almost empty.  Later today is laundry day.  I’ll have lots more to say about them, hung up like soft soldiers in the failing light.

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“Quiet City” teaser

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     The carriage pulled up at exactly nine am.  The polished black buggy with its springs like dull silver swayed lightly as the horseman pulled back on the twin tan and white horses that looked more like they belonged at the Sandown races than at work.

The owner of the carriage descended from the unmarked door, down the steps that one could pass right by without noticing,  his young moustached face vanished behind the carriage door.  No signal was needed as the driver in the tuxedo sprung the strong horses to action, following just behind a Government street trolley car.

On board a man with a newspaper tried not to notice.  He looked at his pocketwatch and made a note, tucking the pad and pen back into the tweed coat he originally bought in the Vauxhall high street.  It had served him for over twenty years that summer.

Now he had the new boy to consider.  One man had stumbled upon far too much and he would have undoubtedly left traces and questions behind for Mr. Baels, the junior clerk from Ottawa not to notice.  The passenger knew he could not be get off the street car until he reached the new Legislature. 

The car clicked onto the new road beside the grand hotel with the warmth of the harbor sun pouring through the windows.  The shadow-like carriage driving behind turned towards the Empress Hotel, driving up the immaculate lawns to the stone steps of the front door.  Outside a sturdy woman in white with bags waited by the door, two giants of men flanking her sides.

“Miss Penny has arrived,” he whispered to himself with his eyes just over the unkempt edge of the Colonist “God help us.”

–

Quiet City is one of the projects I’ve been working on set in Victoria, British Columbia in both modern times and in 1910.

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Little bit about coffee

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This is one of those posts that I think was inevitable.  My day work is as a barista and has been with some exceptions like janitorial and university for some time.  Behind the counter is much like playing music.  You certainly don’t know it the first day and their isn’t any official training.  The more you’re standing behind the portafilters, steam wands and coffee sprinkled counters the more you pick up.

The challenge with coffee is the three factors, namely the product, the water and the equipment.  I like to think that the real drink of a barista would either be a light roast taken black or a single shot of well pulled espresso.  These drinks give you the inherent flavors of the source at its fullest and the wine like subtleties that are otherwise masked.  It’s sounds all fancy but it’s like anything else.  The more you drink the more you notice how bright or not, bitter or not, ect.  The coffee menus are actually simpler than they seem as well.  It is simply “how do you want your milk prepared?”  I won’t get into all of them but with a Latte it’s simply steamed milk over espresso.   A cappuccino is steamed milk and milk foam over espresso (with its name derived from the brown and white outfits of the Cappucine Monks).  Americano….just hot water…you add the milk.  Africano…half hot water and half steamed milk.  Then the other variables come in and yeah…you get those drinks that a barista needs to take a deep breath before announcing.  I can understand the fun of fine tuning like that.  The first coffee I had was at the age of 12, helping in the kitchen at church so I could get out of…well… church.  I remember taking lots of sugar and cream while I helped get ready.  There wasn’t actually much to do in that big square room of counter tops and fridges attached to the hall.  It was mostly about being outta the church sipping coffee.

Naturally your water source should be clean and filtered.  Your best bean choice is from a cafe or local roastery.  Supermarkets rarely throw out old beans and they do go stale eventually.  With the machine you want it to be as clean as you can possibly make it and one trick is to run a pot of water through first to heat the machine (like pot scalding with tea) and to improve the machines ability to extract flavor.  It is also common for people to use to much coffee in the ratio of coffee to water.  One teaspoon of beans per cup of water is perfect.  Your lighter roasts also have more caffeine as the roasting process extracts the caffeine and also gives it that shiny coffee oil look.  Lighter roasts also go better with savory and dark with pastries (sweet).  Chocolate is a great pairing, famously with the mocha which got its name from the port of Moka which traded beans around the world from places like the original source of coffee in the hills of Ethiopia.

There’s a bunch to consider.  Coffee’s almost done.

Cheers,
Tom

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Accidental British Accents

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Possible culprit...too many hours understanding Sir Humphrey?

    First time it happened was before I saw my first British Comedy (see previous blog.)  My mom (apparently) remarked that certain words brought it on.  Was it my Dad’s grandmother from Lincolnshire being about?  Was it my mom rehearsing her lines in amateur stage plays?

     All I can swear is that most of the time it’s not intentional.  My normal west coast Canadian…born in the Kootenay town of Cranbrook…accent goes inexplicably British.  One actual English lady who (as many from the U.K. can) placed the dialect as being more Cockney than from the Shires so maybe it is just too many episodes of Rodney and Del-boy from Only Fools and Horses.

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Watched with Newcastle Brown for additional mental infiltration?

    One person noticed that the accent does appear when I’m asking a question and I’m not sure of the answer.  Like if I’m a nice English gentleman people will not help but be friendly in kind.  Historically I’m not sure how well that works but somehow it’s there.  It does sound far more educated (classically used by characters like Giles of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and perhaps that appeals to some appearance of strong reasoning skills.  Not sure there.  I just do it.  There is every possibility that it comes also from my love of music from the U.K.  I have watched Depeche Mode 101 a number of times amongst others and the band’s accent is East London which is certainly in that Cockney range.

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Alan Wilder givin the skinny.

     It most embarrassingly flares up when speaking to someone from the U.K.   I have been called on it before which usually makes me blush and scuttle away like a crab.  Sideways.  Ok, I don’t do that.  But the embarrassing part happened.  One time I played it out with people who were Canadian but had just come from traveling the Isles and I decided I had just moved from Brixton (had just been reading about that area…or something like that) and I was still finding my way around.  It worked.  Or at least it seemed to.  I take it as some kind of win.

Always hinging on whether he should just stay in London in a year and finish the job…

Tom
🙂

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Living Languages

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Cece Sawyer exploring interactive exhibits

History is like a rising sun.  As our world gets closer and interacts the stories pour out from every corner.  The light floods every alley, every crag, every paper strewn gutter.  History is the great equalizer in a way.  It’s like a secondary version of glory or not.  What we do now ripples out into the galaxy.
My girlfriend and I went to the Royal British Columbia Museum as she hadn’t been there since she was little and I wanted to do some research into First Nations mythology, especially the section with the masks.  It’s best to do that on a weekday I found out as the section was crowded and hard to get notes.

But what was exciting was when we got off the escalator onto the 3rd floor.  There is now a permanent exhibition on First Nations language and stories called Living Languages.

Situated in the entrance to the 3rd floor in what was previously an empty space is a beautifully designed vibrant display of how the language that was nearly silenced is on the rise.  Films created in part by contributors from our community and across the province showcase the language, it’s importance and how it is still being taught despite the years of the schools attempt to suppress it. 

It reminds me of my own Catholic faith which I argue with all the time but I’m sure when the chips are down I will ask for last rights.   The Romans originally tried to silence us (lions played a part here) because they thought we were cannibals with the “body and blood of Christ” bit.

As the sun continues to rise the darkness washes away.  Our schools now explain the story of the residential school system which never happened at my age.  I am glad to see this happen as it has to.

Faith while debated should always be respected as should culture.  It is the lush fabric of our beautiful world.

Tom

Check out the exhibit now at…
http://royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/our-living-languages/

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Listening to stories

Created by TomPogson.com

The Sober Guy.

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It's. ..yummy..

I’m not just sober.  I’m just got off work sober.  They’re all laughing and talking and playing the music so loud my drink is doing that thing that meant the TRex was coming in Jurassic Park.  Actually I think it is TRex playing on the multi cd carousel.  Earlier TRex.   I know the little facts like that.  They can ask me about Marc Bolan if they want to.  Go on anyone.  Give it a go.

I’m in the same place…I’m with the same people.  I hardly think I’m in anyway better than anyone else.  I’m the same way with weed.  I have no interest in it.  Only tried once when I was in a room of musicians and the first two fingers of their right hands were never empty.  It only gave me a stomach ache.  I tried using a jacuzzi once.  When it was full of warm water and the jets were spraying around me I sat there thinking “Ok.  Now what?”

Yeah, I’m a riot a parties.  I’m usually the one at the end who is helping people to cabs.  I actually do like beer and wine (I’m planning on a blog about Georgian wine and I’m still trying to find if anyone sells the Korean beer “Kite” that I had at the Pho Ever Restaurant just off of Shelbourne. )  Buts that’s just it.  I like ‘get togethers’ with friends and trying new things.  I like to come up with things and create.  I had a 24 pack of beer once.  The thing lasted like a month. 

Very weird. 

Tom

Created by TomPogson.com

Story idea one.

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I remember nothing.

It is early morning and I am wrapped in the cradle of the lapping waves and the woodland surrounding the beach.  Tracks lead from clearing in the bush, pushed back by what I can only assume is my own frame.  I don’t remember pushing through them.  I don’t remember the night before or who I was I was when I came here so determined.

The smell of the water is the first sense I have as my eyes open to face the side of a fallen tree, my fists clenching firmly packed sand.  I slept next to the side of a single piece of driftwood, it’s shape slashing diagonally across from last tufts of grass near the rise of the woodland to the constant motion of the waterline.  The waterline is moving slowly and uncertainly as it pulls out, its rhythm too gentle to be the open ocean.  I seem to have such basic understandings of things.  But I have no idea where they came from, what this place is or how I came to be in the clothes I wear.  I remember nothing.

The clothes I see on me are ragged, tattered in all likelihood from whatever brought me to this strange sheltering place.  Black dress pants.  Long sleeve shirt.  An old beige coat with rippled stretchable fabric at the wrists and waist.  The coat is torn in a single slit on the left elbow.

Standing up and discovering the soreness in my legs and that left elbow I walk to the waterline.  My sand filled black dress shoes reach the hissing sunbaked edge of the tide.

I knee down, peering into the shifting light of cold water.  I manage a reflection between the shimmer of the sunlight and twists of hair-like kelp.

I learn little.  I notice a hint of blue and look down to see a blue metal nametag that says “Charlie”.  I’m in my mid thirties somewhere.  My hair is rumpled, unkempt and chestnut.  I see nothing else that would set me apart from another man at this age.  I’m unshaved and my name is Charlie.  Or that is what the tag says.

Looking into my reflection the sound of the helicopter blades grows until the ripples of waves are static across the view.

(Started playing around with this idea as a morning writing exercise.  I don’t know if I will keep up the odd present tense but I like the idea of someone who has to start things over from zero like this.  Let me know any constructive ideas.  Cheers!

Tom)

Celtic Bassist

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Victoria Celebrates Canada Day

Everything can just happen with one phone call.  This is how it all started for me almost ten years ago now.  That was the start of frankly the longest running work I have had to date…my beginning with Cookeilidh.

Dave Cook and I had jammed before in other projects but at that time I was just working, writing, busking on government and playing the occasional open stage gig.  I kick myself for this but I had sold off alot of my extra gear so I just had a fretless Peavey Axecellorator Bass, my acoustic guitar and my multitracking equipment for making songs.  It’s sounds fancy but there was way more stuff back in the day and this is why the early days is all pictures of me playing that off-gold badly beaten fretless.  It is all that existed.  Even my guitar bag was multipurpose and hung so low that if I wasn’t careful the bass would hit any curb I stepped over (part reason for its battered look). 
Anyways Dave and Kim had just started trying celtic just for fun on the gorge as his wife Kim had gotten into it and people were already liking it (they weren’t busking…just playing for fun)  I met up with Dave in a James Bay coffee shop and he gave me a tape.  Yeah a tape.  It was back in those days.  The more we talked about the project the more interesting it sounded.  It was a whole world of music I was just being exposed to and playing to that tape became something I did daily just for fun as well as listening to all the celtic music I could find.  I use digital recordings on my laptop now to practice to but I still haven’t really stopped since that first cassette that started with Dave strumming some sustain chords and stating “Ok this is Mairi’s Wedding.”
Naturally my role is a little unusual being the bassist in a trad celtic band but for almost ten years now it has worked.  There is alot of learning to fill the holes up between the instruments and not crowd them.  Some listening to celtic piano helped back in the day as I’m almost just a bigger badder version of a left hand.  Mostly joking there but so much is just taking what songs we do and finding how my instrument can enhance it. 
It’s like they say about drummers. 
It’s good when you don’t notice them.  That sounds bad but it isn’t.   And now and again we backup guys get our moment. 
And when it’s good it’s just priceless!

Got to go practice soon 🙂
Cheers,
Tom

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Me and Max

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     Ever wanted to slip back like a shadow in time?  There’s points in my life I would like to visit and put on a rolling guitar effects loop.  Others naturally I would like to just take a Pink Pearl to and completely obliterate.  But I can imagine they are there for a reason.  They are hard lefts and rights.
     Max is a mishmash of the past for me that I liked the idea of revisiting.  I haven’t worked in my parents garage wanting to be a bike mechanic since I was twenty two but writing gives me the chance to play with that world, with a character like Max and allow other crazier things happen.  I don’t think I’d want to write an actual autobiography…ever.  Most of what I do is actually pretty boring and mostly by myself.  Not the best copy but there you go.  Most of what I do is just beavering away at this sort of thing or bass (hey, who wants to here a scale?!) or what have you.  It’s the end result I’m after…like with Max and his dream of being an awesome self employed bike mechanic.
And along the way to that I can take him on all kinds of adventures where he can show his simple honest spirit.  I love Max for that.  In an age where things are getting lean and too complex for words he is just Max.  His dreams aren’t palatial and he always tries to put a positive spin on things.

So if you’ve gotten this far thank you very much for reading!

Please check Max out at…
Journal by Max

Cheers,
Tom

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Thirty years of British Comedy

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Cook Street Village...Home of Pic a Flic Video

                    “Here we come…”

     British Comedy and the even broader subject of British culture started for me with the Monkeeys.   And it was a long fun journey since then.

     I do have some heritage from the U.K. so that probably helps but it basically started from growing up with the Monkeeys on television which I would try to never miss (along with the usual collection of Saturday morning cartoons where I would use the TV Guide to map my morning from 7 am to noon like Faramir reviewing a map of Mordor.)

     I was especially a fan of Davey to the point where I was playing Tambourine at church and incorporating as best I could the dance that also became known as the “Axl Shuffle” of Axl Rose.  Almost wonder if he’s a British Comedy fan?  He was mentioned in Depeche Mode 101 where not only was he slammed with a fan exclaiming “guns and posers” but he went to the premier with Dave Gahan trying to distract him when the  cheeky line appeared on film.  Anyways. ..

     The next stage in my britishizing was when I accidentally turned on public television and came across someone who looked and sounded much like Davey Jones minus the red suit and tambourine.  It was Hywel Bennett and the show was Shelley.

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Shelley and Mrs. H.

    It wasn’t Davey.  He didn’t do Daydream Believer.  There wasn’t a decent tambourine in sight.  But it made me laugh.  And most importantly…it made me curious.

     Shelley was smart, fast talking and talked about things I’d never heard of.  There were obagines, the foreign office and the dhss, and Chinese take-aways whatever that was.  Naturally these were all the British equivalent to talking about eggplant, welfare and ordering Chinese food and picking it up.  But for me at eleven it was this whole new world where people talked different about mysterious probably cool grown up things I had no idea about. 

     The next step was a classic.  I watched a number of Fawlty Towers episodes in a row with my Dad and Grandfather.   Well.  Enough said there.

     Eventually I started watching for the two back to back Britcoms that would be on the station from Seattle from 10 to 11 pm (I didn’t use a VCR because that would be wrong.  The record feature is meant for…meant for…uh…nevermind…)

   These included the classic but new to me…ok…deep breath…Butterflies, Red Dwarf, Never the Twain, The Manor Born, Yes Minister, Yes Prime Minister, Good Neighbours, Monty Python (naturally), Are You Being Served, Blackadder, Mr. Bean (eventually though that came to us first via CBC), and more Fawlty Towers.

     With the mixture of YouTube and the British Section of Pic a Flic pictured above I discovered an army more of titles which would be silly to start listing and discovered the world behind many of the shows like Only Fools and Horses (huge in the U.K. but strangely lesser known here) The Young Ones (born of the comedy club beginnings of The Comic Strip Presents…its name taken from its proximity to a strip club) which like many comedy projects began as two person acts such as Fry and Laurie, French and Saunders, and Rik and Abe.  One of my most favored movies “The Tall Guy” with Jeff Goldblum is based on the partnership of Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis.  It also featured “Must be Love” by Madness.

     Which brings me to my strange equal fascination with British Music.  Beyond one of my favorite first bands having a British singer (Davey) and the next being Queen I have no idea.  I do know that in the case of bands like Embrace and Elvis Costello I would like their music first and then find out they were from the United Kingdom afterwards.

     I would like to go there someday but I almost wonder if the mystery is more intact we me over here.  To me they’re still that cool, strange place of Factory Records (New Order), Mute (Depeche), Black Books, Adam and Joe, and (saving the best for last) these three gentlemen who turned the idea I had of writing a sitcom myself into a huge, huge obsession with the idea.

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Stephen Merchant, Ricky Gervais, Karl Pilkington

Cheers,
Tom

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