talkmagic.co.uk

I only got back into magic at xmas and I've already got it so bad that:
1) I now get my magic delivered to work to avoid divorce
2) and its taken me about a month to admit it to myself and read this post!

Gony,

If you talk nicely to your postman (lady?) and explain they will often find ways of helping with the need for magic. For instance, mine has adopted the following procedures for the delivery of things that are obviously magic (i.e. they bear a sticker from the sending company).

Items in this category are thrown/placed by my postman into the large coniferous treee in the middle of my garden. This ensures that detetection by any unsuspecting (or in the case of my wife, suspicious) person is almost unlikely to happen.

To inform me (hereafter called the mage) that there is a delivery, the postperson now takes the last flowerpot from the row on empty flowerpots outside my study window and turns it upside down. If there is one parcel (a poor day!) this is the first flowerpot on the left, if there is two, then it is the second and so on until it become the end pot (and I have to visit the toilet before fishing the parcels out due to excitement getting the better of me).

Now, when I get home, I quickly (using the art of misdirection courtesy of the fine Fitzkee series of books I have purchased) go into the garden and empty the paper from the study into the recycling box and retrieve the first item (which is then secreted or as I prefer 'palmed' about my body). A word of warning here, any parcel containing wands should not be stuck down trousers, I've done this and the lady next door no longer talks to me without blushing .

This is then repeated using the bottles and should there be more (oh joy, the tins, the cardboard items and then if necessary watering the garden comes in handy as a good ruse to revisit the drop off point.

I hope this helps to save your marriage! It has certainly saved mine (and enhanced my reputation with the lady next door).

More later, just realised wife is about to leave and I have to unwrap my eight volume collection of Tarbell (plus the two Gospel additional volumes) and hide them behind the desk before she returns.

Vic

ps. To aid you in your desire to be a better magician, may I recommend the 'Secret Army' and 'Colditz' videos, I find their advice on floorboards storage holes invaluable for the DVD collection!

Sound advice vic_vdb!
Much better than some of the lame excuses I used recently before deciding that my place of employment was the only safe refuge for my prizes: "..ah they have mucked up my order again, I'll need to send this back, so don't be surprised if I get another parcel in a couple of days..."

Another good tip for the serious magicians among us . . . .

A good storage place for all those 'must have' packet tricks is your standard PC. Undo the screws at the rear of the side panel and then, having placed them in a C5 envelope (making sure the contents can't fall out) put them inside the machine. Keep them away from the fans and things . . . no matter how many tricks you buy, your study, bedroom, kennel (whatever you live in) will be 'clean'. No matter how much the thought police (sorry, wife) checks, it is obvious that you don't have any new magic anywhere and you're obviously on the road to being 'cured'.

If you have a machine with see through sides, you can get a sheet of gel material to obscure this.

Yours in the craft,

Customer VDB 127540

ps.

Another good tip is a large sheet of plane glass, a hatstand, coat, scarf and umbrella. Have a go at the 'Blue Room' and she'll be too scared to check too much again (p.s. make sure she's a strong heart, when this trick was first done people collapsed through fear apparently!).

I'm saving up for this trick, seen it advertised on magicauctions.co.uk! Anyone got a spare £2,500?

gony wrote:I only got back into magic at xmas and I've already got it so bad that:
1) I now get my magic delivered to work to avoid divorce

Glad Im not the only one to do this. But I wish they'd stop plastering in the packages with the shops name (get some odd looks from my colleagues)

Rob

You're not on your own by any means. I have all my stuff delivered to work because I get my sticky little mitts on it much quicker (CUPS again!) and the Postman at home always calls when everyone's out so I have to go collect from the sorting office the following day, i.e. 24 hours wasted! I get the same funny looks and comments from the guys here but, by now, I think they know I'm just plain weird.

Even more embarrassing though is that we always recycle and re-use any incoming packaging - especially Jiffy Bags. As a result, I spend ages with a marker pen or buff packing tape erasing out the various names, labels and so on!

That made me laugh out loud about the re-cycle of jiffy bags.

Thanks - I'm having a really c**p day in work and that brightend me up

Cheers
Rob

Having read the le carre books further, I'm working on a process whereby (using a series of aliases) I will be having my packages left at various 'letter boxes'.

This is of course essential for those who work from home and therefore have no other altenatives for posting (such as mandrake). I am currently negotiating with out 24 hr convenience store so that I can creep out when everyone else is asleep and retrieve the larger (non treeable, see entry above) items.

That said. Mandrake, have you thought of developing an alias, such as I.T. Départmente and organising company so that any such addressed itmes are left in your office, cube or portacabin (all eventualities covered there I think!)? This would enable you to re-use Jiffy bags (I use mine to vanish my range of Neilsen products (coke bottles, sauce bottles, beer bottles, small furry things, etc.)) evelopes and the like by explaining to the wife that they come from the computer bods (aka geeks or nerds) in your oganisation and thus saving you the effort and expense of that valuable shaprie ink.

Hope this helps a fellow believer

Vic

Just had a thought, what a pity Douglas Bader wasn't a magician - just think of all that magical apparateus one could hide in a pair of tin legs!

Anyway, must go, Magictricks.co.uk catalogue is in the post I'm opening and have to go up in the loft to read it (another tip, buy a roll or two of roofing felt, great excuse that you're lagging loft and that it's dangerous - don't come up - can read and practice for hours up there and as you have the ladder you're in command ),

Have a good day,

Vic

Over the last 3 or 4 years I've probably tried more methods of concealment and subterfuge than M15 but She Who Must Be Obeyed is far clever than that. The aggro I used to get (Not ANOTHER new trick?????) has only stopped because I discovered the antidote.

Next time your ever loving tells you her new dress/skirt/shoes/whatever were a bargain/half price/whatever, insist on seeing the real receipts. Pound to a penny their £15 bargain actually cost £25 and they're just verbally 'trimming' the price to make you feel happy. At least, that was what I was told and a sort of peace/truce reigns in Mandrake Towers these days - roughly similar to the US and the USSR during the days of the cold war!

man, these past few posts have been the funniest in ages! I need a chuckle, Ive gotta do some maths GSCE course work now. And Im only in year 9.

At least you arent in the middle of sitting the final exams like me

What are you studying Mark?

Finals are a pain when you're doing them but when you retell the story in five years time they (and the whole studying process) will have become so easy! Funny how quickly the human brain turns fear and fact into fantasy - sort of misdirection I suppose!

Hope they go well,

Vic

ouch-kabibble wrote:man, these past few posts have been the funniest in ages! I need a chuckle, Ive gotta do some maths GSCE course work now. And Im only in year 9.

Just you wait until you get to the AS maths - then you'll think that GCSE is a joke . And I'm only in year 9 too .

Seriously, the maths coursework marking scheme is very lenient. Just remember, POAE (nobody else understood that).

.

Kati

I've just found that the boss (i.e. Mrs W) has just ordered yet another new mobile phone!!!

Now I dont feel so bad about spending money on my Leyser 2020 this week (which she dont know about )

Year 9 - is that the same has the old 3rd form?

Cheers
Rob