The host for this meeting was Steve Irwin, and the theme was
“Coins”. Steve loves magic with coins,
and he demonstrated a really puzzling effect – he placed two coins inside a
silk, folded it up, and without any suspicious moves, opened the silk out and
the coins had vanished. We spectators were completely baffled.
Al Hirschel spoke about the Physics of Heat as he displayed
a brass coin box on his hand. Using his
warm breath to expand the coin in the box a little, he caused the coin to pass
right through the box and his hand and fall on to the table ! He explained that he adores coin boxes, both
the Okito, which he was using tonight, and a similar box of different design - the
Boston Box.
Wearing a baseball hat, David Whitson presented a striking
figure. He removed the baseball hat from
his head, and from it produced several magic props – including a coin
slide. This very old prop was worth
another demonstration, reminding us of the magic tricks we used to do in our
youth! Then David showed Number Tables,
and asked Graham Holstein to choose a number, and tell him which of the tables
it was on. This enabled David to divine
what the mentally chosen number was.
Joel Howlett showed us a purse frame – just the frame, it
had no cloth attached. From the purse
frame he produced a coin. He then vanished the coin, produced a pen, vanished
the pen and made it reappear, made the pen change back into the coin and turned
the coin into a teaspoon. Quite bewildering and very smoothly done!
The Mental Photography Deck was the item shown by John
Ferguson. He had been shown this by the
magician at DeLarno’s Magic many years ago.
He spread the deck of cards, and every one of them was blank on both
sides. He “mentally concentrated” and
then a card face appeared. He cut the
deck at that point, and riffled through the deck, and now all the faces and all
the backs of the cards had appeared.
Graham Holstein had brought some items to give away. One was the Coin Tray, which can make a coin
appear. He also had round glass discs,
that could be dropped into water to help one vanish a coin in a glass of
water. Also, he had a paper fan which could
cause a coin to appear on the end of the closed fan.
By popular request, Steve Irwin was asked if he would explain
how his earlier marvellous trick with the coin and silk worked. He kindly agreed to do so, and we were all
further stunned !
Later, the Annual General Meeting was held, and the current
Office bearers were re-elected for 2019.
The 2019 syllabus was discussed, and a draft syllabus agreed to.
