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SEAL'S 30th Facelift
Peterborough's Annual 'Sale, Exchange &
Lecture Day' gets a new venue and date
Sunday 14th October 2018
As seen by Walt Lees
The decision to change the venue and move the date into the autumn helped to
boost attendance at the Peterborough Society of Magicians annual shindig.
Despite the heavy rain, which may have put some off, there were certainly more
sellers on 14th October than in the previous couple of years. Whether this was
due to the new venue or change of date, is open to speculation.
The Italian Community Centre is more modern and better furbished than its
predecessor. But on the downside, everything had to take place in the same room:
no separate café, lecture annex or dealers hall. This did mean that, because of
pressure on floor space, many of the sellers stands were accessible from all
sides, with no clearly defined area for either customers or stallholders.
It also meant that during the lectures all the stalls had to close, probably no
bad thing, as it allowed those who had brought stuff to sell the freedom to sit
down and watch, along with everyone else, safe in the knowledge that they were
not missing any potential customers.
But the main thing about the SEAL Day is the lectures. This year, there were
three as normal, but somewhat unusually, they were all of basically the same
type, i.e. inventive people fooling us with their creations and then explaining
how they worked. That having been said, we saw a lot of innovative and clever
new magic, with a surprising amount of variety.
Steve Gore, no stranger to the lecture circuits in the UK, opened the
proceedings. He had some nice ideas with ropes as well as demming his Amnesia
Deck, which is specially printed by the US Playing Card Company. It enables you
to do many effects which would normally require the Aronson memorized stack,
without actually having to go to the trouble of learning it.
But most of us thought the real highlight was his GPS Deck. It also makes
possible lots of different feats and is fully examinable. For example, in one of
them a spectator shuffles the cards, then removes one and places it unseen into
his pocket. He next shuffles the deck some more and hands it back to the
performer, who without looking at any faces, instantly names the pocketed card.
If that reads like a miracle it is! And it can be repeated ad nauseam.
The second lecturer was Ben Williams, who typifies the modern street-magic
style. Much of his material has a casual organic feel, which often belies the
careful preparation underpinning it. He began with a one-ahead prediction that
seemingly eliminated the need to force any of the choices. He then went on to
explain his method of producing a selected card from his shoe, followed by a
small pot of jam perhaps it was honey or marmalade something in one of those
tiny jars you get in many hotels, these days.
He also had a nice, easily-made gimmick to enable you to balance a Sharpie or
fork at an impossible angle on your finger. One of those things where the
seemingly casual spontaneity of the performance gives a false impression of no
preparation.
The highlight of his hour-long offering was a routine linking and unlinking Polo
Mints, climaxing with the Os on the packet logo also being caused to link,
leaving the spectators with a souvenir to scratch their heads over.
The lectures were concluded by John Morton, a newish face on the circuit, who
had an impressive array of original mental magic. He began by showing how
tea-bag paper is ideal for the old scientific effect of a flaming cylinder
rising high into the air; something for which most commonly-available paper does
not work very well these days.
Later, he showed an ingenious method of marking envelopes for a Psychometry
routine, in which nothing is visible to the participants. There was also a
cigarette-card divination using pictures of well-known super heroes, a book test
with a children s picture book, and the stunning prediction of a lottery-ticket
number using freely-chosen symbol cards displayed on a large board, and the
assistance of several spectators. We were told that this highly visual item,
manufactured to order by John, is already in the repertoire of a number of
leading professional performers. And it is not hard to see why.
The raffle was drawn after this lecture; then dealing continued for a while
longer, before the day concluded.
I certainly found it an enjoyable event, even picked up a couple of interesting
bargains and watched a lot of classy new magic. What more can you ask?
©
Walt Lees, October 2018
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