I've just spend most of the day at SEMC in Frimley and have popped home for a bit of a break before the Gala Show this evening. Thought you might be interested to hear how things were going so far...
The venue is great - nice and spacious with plenty of free parking, as promised. The car park looks like this...
...and I spotted this excellent distinctive number plate...
...and this is the main hall, surrounded by tables and very professionally done (if slightly "chicken in a basket", if you know what I mean)...
I arrived about 9.30am and encountered the only hitch of the day. For some reason, although pretty much everyone had already paid and got their tickets we had to "register" before we could go in, and there was only one very slow person doing this so the queue was huge! It took me about 20 minutes to get through this and with the first round of lectures starting at 10am some people got a bit narked. But then Geoff P. came to the rescue and got things moving a lot quicker. As I said above this was the only glitch all day.
Once "registered" I tracked down "lecture hall 2" for Paul Gordon's session and this was a real highlight. Paul has an excellent relaxed, humourous but still technically first-class manner and he came across really well. He ran through a number of routines and then explained how they worked, assuming that the audience had a basic level of understanding of the DL, Palm, etc. Several of us commented on how good his palming was and we enjoyed his anecdotes and book/DVD plugs at the end. I had a quick chat to him afterwards and he's a great guy, plus he knows Harry Lorayne which made me very jealous as HL is a big hero of mine.
I then wandered over to the trade stand hall. It looked like this...
...and this...
Lots of good stuff to look at and a nice mix of "big illusions", DVDs, books, clothes, puppets (!), etc. Davenports were trying to sell "Sixth Sense" but I didn't see anyone buy it and at £135 (!) that's no big suprise.
My "find of the day" was a first edition Harry Lorayne book from the 70s that I've seen on eBay for £100+ which I got for £5 - result! I was determined not to spend too much, but somehow gradually accumulated 9 books, 3 DVDs, a JOL wallet, some flash cards and 13 new decks!
Most of the SEMC attendees were males in their 40/s/50s/60s (many with terrible dress-sense, I'm afraid!). Women made up less than 10%, so the disco later on is going to be "interesting". Paul Zenon was around somewhere. I spoke briefly to dat8962 from this very forum - we seemed to be the only two people wearing "TM" badges. If you haven't met David before I must warn you, he is HUGE! I don't mean fat but very (very!) tall and, well, large all round. If most people are bridge-size then he's poker-size!
Paul Gordon's stand was very lively as he was doing tricks, giving advice and so on. He and his beautiful wife were doing a roaring trade with lots of offers on his various books and DVDs...
...I think I spent more here than on the other stands put together and it was well worth it. If you've overlooked Paul's books in the past I'd really recommend checking them out. They focus on tricks that impress the layman (and therefore get you bookings and money) rather than tricks that just impress other magicians. Having said that his tricks can do that as well!
I enjoyed the stand for TheMagicCompany, especially as they had lots of custom clothing built around the "six of hearts" and by coincidence that's the card named on my dog tags - so that led into a nice little unplanned routine with the friendly lady running the stand...
Also got great service from the Burning Card Magic stand. including a copy of Dan and Dave's "Trilogy" DVD set for £40. Bargain! Nice friendly couple running this stand, but unfortunately only one of them made it into my pic...
To avoid spending any more money I then wandered back over to the main hall only to find that JC Sum and Magic Babe Ning were doing some demos and interviews for ITV...
..MBN was swallowing flaming swords and looked amazing - the pics don't do her justice! She is also the thinnest person I've ever seen, must be a size zero! She liked my AoS/skull t-shirt - I would have offered it to her but (1) I got is specially imported from Israel at great expense and (2) I think it would have been a bit too big for her!
JC was a really helpful friendly guy (although for some reason all my pics seem to be of MBN rather than him). The two of them make a great team. Should be a brilliant performance tonight!
