Monday, October 24, 2016

What Happened at the Meeting on Friday 21st October


Andrew Pickard led the evening, which had the theme of “Apparatus Magic”.  He showed a nut screwed on to a bolt.  When he pressed the top of the bolt, the nut eerily unscrewed by itself. The item was completely examinable.  Next he had a card chosen and vanished in the pack, then used he pack to explode an inflated balloon, and there was the chosen card, from inside the balloon !

The layout of metal apparatus in front of Al Hirschel was so impressive that someone wondered if this was a metal-worker’s shop!  He displayed two brass tubes, one long and one shorter.  After your reporter put a pencil in the short tube, Al said the magic word and opened the two tubes, and the pencil had moved to the longer tube.  Al’s father had given him the next item – the classic ball bearing passing mysteriously through the too-small diameter hole.

John Ferguson caused a silk with a picture of a caterpillar to vanish in a silk box, and then he tapped a crystal casket and a large butterfly silk appeared inside it – the caterpillar had grown up!  A “Foo Can” allowed John to pour water or to show it empty at will.  Next. a large box was shown empty, and then from the inside were taken plates of sweets for everyone – a bit of a surprise.

Another surprise was in store for us as David Whitson brought out a round metal box that was labelled “sweets”. However, when he opened it, an orange spring snake jumped out of it – a quick way to get our attention! He then gave a demonstration of some pretty card fans.  Next, using a whole pack of giant cards, he told a story in which at each point of the story, the cards he showed illustrated the story (e.g. the German waiter said “Nein, nein, Nein!” and David produced three of the nines). We were really absorbed with this, wondering each moment what he would say next and how he would work the cards into the story.

Noel Clair was brilliant at handling a stack of brass coins – make them appear and disappear on command.  He is clearly enjoying coin magic, and did other nice coin items for us.

The apparatus that Steve Irwin had brought was a cigarette box.  He opened it and three cigarettes were present. He closed and opened it, and only one was present.  He was able to control how many cigarettes were in the box.

Michael Blakeman did a nice chosen card to wallet item, showing the wallet empty to start, and then the card appeared in it.  Smooth handling!

Smooth handling was evident too when Joel Howlett manipulated two appearing canes – a visual surprise from thin air !  A colourful silk fountain led on to the production of an elephant silk.  Next he put a needle and thread inside a wallet with a blank card, and he had a card chosen (2D), then there appeared in the wallet a card with the two of diamonds embroidered into it!

Dennis Norman had brought along an optical illusion of two curved specimen plastic pieces to show us.  It resembled the well-known banana illusion, but this one also had a measuring strip – when Dennis “stretched” the banana–like specimen, the measuring strip showed it had lengthened!  He also asked for help with a “Silver Sceptre”, and Joel demonstrated how he had used one.  This is one of the useful advantages of being part of a magic club – learning from each other!