What Happened at the meeting on Friday 21st February

Noel Clair led the meeting with the theme of Coin Tricks.  As an introduction, he started with a mathematical item that required several number inputs from a spectator, and the results were the spectator’s age and two digits of their phone number.

Steve Irwin showed us a close-up coin item.  Right in front of each person, he placed a coin openly on his palm, rubbed the coin vigorously, and it vanished.  He clearly showed us his hands and arms, and there was nowhere for the coin to go!

Neil Lynch chose a coin transposition for his item.  He displayed a silver coin in his palm, made a mystic pass, and the coin had changed into a copper coin.  Surprising !

Al Hirschel is very keen on impromptu items that a magician can do if he is asked to “Do a magic trick”.  Al did for us a “Do and Demonstrate” for an impromptu Coin through Spectator’s Palm.  Obviously anyone can carry or borrow a dollar coin, the only apparatus needed, and his impromptu presentation was convincing.

Another strong presentation was given to us by David Whitson.   He had developed a story presentation for Dynamic Coins, the classic brass coin box that many of us (including myself) have stored away, unused.  His story involved a person crossing over borders from one country to another and avoiding the theft of his money by the dishonest border guards by using the coin box to vanish his money.  We might be inspired to try it out !   David also had a novelty item of one large coin that could be split into two coins of the same diameter.

“Would you please mark your initials on this five cent piece?” asked Andrew Pickard of a volunteer.  He then showed the volunteer a pair of dishes, closed with rubber bands.  On opening these, and the enclosed pair of dishes, we found the marked coin in the centre of this nest.  A nice presentation of classic magic!

The evening was then very capably wrapped up by Noel Clair.  He used the French drop to vanish a coin,  and then produced from his knee, elbow or a spectator’s ear.  Taking a large card mat he performed a nice coin matrix (“with just a little shake of my hand one coin moves diagonally across..”).  He showed us how skilled was his manipulation as he repeatedly vanished and produced a huge coin (4 cm diameter across)  –  a coin that seemed impossible to hide !

What Happened at the Meeting on Friday 21st January

The theme of the January 2014 meeting was ”Free Choice” – which is a pretty broad theme ! - hosted by Al Hirschel.  "Free Choice" could include items we had been working on during the holidays..... 

Al's free choice was an alphabet game, in which the goal was to be the last person to cross out the last letter of the 26.  This fascinated all of us, particularly David Blunden, who did a logical and mathematical analysis of it to discover its workings ! 

Joel Howlett showed a diary with a card written on each day, and the card chosen by the spectator matched the one that was written on today’s date in the diary! In another card item, the chosen card disappeared from the deck and appeared back in the card box, which was on the table all the time. 

Next, Joel did a magnificent item.  He cut off ten talons from the pack of cards, and showed that they each had 1, 2 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 cards in them!  Then he turned over the top card of each pile and showed they were all the spades from 1 to 10 in numerical order!   He added the K, Q, J of Spades to complete the suit, then he mixed up the remaining cards.  Dividing the cards with two cuts, he displayed each of the the three packets – one had all the hearts in numerical order, and the others likewise all the clubs and all the diamonds. Stunning!…….   think of the practice this must necessitate !

John Ferguson did an item of Chemical Magic – Colourless to Muddy to Colourless illustrating a story that he told. (This uses silver nitrate, sodium hydroxide and ammonia.)

Al Hirschel did one of those wonderful story-telling items he likes so much in which he repeatedly turns over cards to illustrate the story he is telling. They work well - as long as every card turns up at the right moment, as they did - there's practice and skill.

Noel Clair was into story telling as well, and his story was based on the well-known jumping rubber bands, which we hardly recognized, it was so cleverly illustrated by his story.

He performed some items using hair securers, and levitated a card.  Then he did that beautiful classic, Card Warp, in which a card bent inside another card reverses from front to back as you push it through.

Barry Whitson performed Equal-Unequal Ropes – a nice rope routine that always goes well.

David Whitson showed us Three Card Monte using giant cards, and he talked about methods for doing this.

Our "free choices" ended up as a really enjoyable night.