Tuesday, November 22, 2016

What Happened at the Meeting on Friday 18th November 2016


The theme of the meeting was “Packet Card Tricks”, hosed by John Ferguson, and he led off with a “Prediction Card” effect in which the spectator chose four cards, and more cards were dealt on top of each of these, then by counting down to the total of the indices of the four cards, the predicted card was revealed.   He later performed “8-card Brainwave”, a.k.a. “Red Hot Mama”, in which the one card of the eight displayed that is chosen by the spectator is the only one with a differently coloured back.

Joel Howlett performed  five close up items.  He did three classic rubber band tricks – Crazy Man’s Handcuffs,  Band through Thumb, and Travelling Cash. In this, Joel asked Tom Blunden to fold a $5 note around one of four strands of rubber band between Joel’s fingers. When Joel flexed the rubber strands, the note moved by itself down to the next strand. It was nice to see these classics carried out again so neatly.  He followed these with sugar grains to filled sugar packet, and torn and restored paper napkin.

David Whitson presented three single-coloured cards to pick, and the one chosen by Al Hirschel was the one he had predicted.  Then David showed us a packet trick of four king cards called the “Mystic Kings”, purchased many years ago.  The chosen king vanished.  Al Hirschel recalled that Alf Hayes who ran De Larno’s so long ago in the Piccadilly Arcade had told him that of all the packet tricks he had, “Mystic Kings” was the most popular ! Next, David had a card chosen, and it appeared sliding out of a large colourful card frame.

“Mind Reading Extraordinaire” was the theme of Michael Blakeman’s item.   He tried to find the card Steve Howlett had chosen by questioning him Steve about it, and judging from his facial expressions what the card was.  He succeeded.  Twice.  This was impressive !  His next item, and the final item of the night, was a chosen card revelation by making the chosen card reverse face up in the middle of the spread face down deck.  This was a very visual conclusion !