Newsletter: 114 for February 2006 Martin opened the meeting by wishing everyone a happy new year. Geoffrey Durham is appearing at The Hazlitte, Maidstone on Thursday 9th March. Tickets are £12.50. Next meeting on 8th February is close-up competition. For any members who still hadn’t heard, an announcement was made about the death of Bob Pennell. The funeral took place between Christmas and New Year and Pat has asked for any donations to be sent to British Heart Foundation. For those people who have never met Bob, he and Pat used to make the teas for ACES and Sussex Magic Circle and also helped out at the Southdown. They always went along and supported the Club wherever they performed. This month’s challenge for Mike and Robin was pancakes, but unfortunately Robin had forgotten his props. Mike showed the audience the empty pan where he would make the pancake but he needed to find the ingredients. He placed an empty glass under a canister and when it was removed again the glass was full of water. Eggs were next on the recipe and he took an empty bag and made an egg appear. Mike put the lid on the pan and took out a match to create the heat and turned it into the last ingredient, the flower. Mike opened the lid and a pancake had appeared inside. The theme for the evening was Unconventional magic. Robin was first up on the stage and started off with an effect which tested Caroline’s knowledge of the counties in England. He then held up a white piece of card and asked Sarah if she could guess what was written on the reverse side. She replied “no” and sure enough when the card was turned around “no” was written across it. Sarah then joined Robin and he gazed into her eyes and held her hands. He asked her to draw a scene containing a house, tree and sun then asked her to sign the picture and show it to the audience. Robin said that the picture showed she was bold and outward going as a child, an only sibling and closer to her mother than father. He also said she’s flamboyant as an adult and her father is a big character (which was all know to be true). He then showed Sarah two books and asks her to choose one and open it up at any page. Robin asked her to pick a word with more than four letters and to tell him the letter the word began. Sarah said the first letter was “L” and he then guessed the word to be “Leaving” which Sarah confirmed was correct. Reg Moores showed the audience an effect with light bulbs and explained that he was making up some of the bulbs for a few people who had already asked him. He doesn’t want to make too many up, so they are kept reasonably exclusive, but if you are interested please have a chat with him. Next we saw Lin perform a number of effects amongst which were the changing hoops. Both sides of three different coloured hoops were shown to the audience. Whilst juggling the hoops everyone was asked to make a magic gesture and shout change and each time this happened the hoops changed colour. Suzie joined Lin on stage juggling, with Matthew lying on the floor below her, using a shoe, pen and one of Dave’s smelly socks. To end her performance Lin helped set the scene by asking the audience to take a deep breath, think of something Arabic, and tied a scarf around her head and middle. A razor blade was shown to the audience and a piece of paper was torn several times to show it was genuine. Lin then placed the blade in her mouth, swallowed and drank some water. A total of eight razor blades were swallowed then a piece of thread was rolled into a ball and also placed in the mouth. To finish she pulled the thread out of her mouth and the razor blades were all attached. After the break the monthly challenge trophy was awarded to Mike and Dave challenged “sheep” for next month. Two trophies were awarded, firstly the Tony Richards Shield was presented to Bob Rickard and Zac received the trophy for the member who had held the monthly challenge trophy the most number of times throughout the year. There was also the Close-up trophy for Dave Lambert but unfortunately he wasn’t at the meeting to receive it. Mike Pettitt took to the stage to continue the evening’s theme. He had a card chosen and asked Steve to sign his name on it and place it back in the deck. He then brought out his faithful hound, Sherlock Bones. Mike gave Sherlock a bone and placed it in his mouth so it could be seen. Steve then asked Sherlock to find his card and sure enough inside his mouth was Steve’s card, the ace of clubs. Brenda helps Mike out on another effect telling a story whilst he folded cut paper to create various shapes to help tell a wonderful tale about a Chinese man in a boat. Stan entertained the audience next with a talk relaying lots of interesting facts about dowsing rods and crop fields a lot of which were his own experiences. The secret force of nature is what Stan calls unconventional magic. Dave was the last member to perform. He asked John and Steve to join him on stage and demonstrated how to get a bubble and penny inside a balloon. Written by: Back

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