From Ring Reporter Peter Rodgers
Ring 102 Sydney NSW Australia – The Maurice Rooklyn Ring
Meets 3rd Tuesday Every Month at 7:30pm at Northside Chatswood Salvation Army Church Hall Cnr. Bertram and Johnson Street Chatswood. Dale Trueman President email daletrueman@me.com
Our December meeting, really a Christmas party, was again held on the deck at our treasurer, Peter Woods home at Lane Cove. Although quite close to the CBD with many main roads nearby the outlook of Peter’s deck is across the rooftops of suburbia into bush land and across valleys to Sydneys North West, and at dusk, into the setting sun. Although its summer in Sydney the weather was mild and we had a rollup of over twenty members and visitors. It was obvious that returning to a barbecue was more popular Christmas party meeting than last years experiment of having pizzas delivered. Dale Trueman is our president, but tonight he manned the barbecue cooking, steaks, sausages, lamb ribs, chicken wings and fish pieces. Peter, and his lady friend Michelle provided the nibbles, salads and multiple Christmas deserts and puddings latter in the night. Members provide their own drinks, but there was plenty of sharing on the night.
The entertainment commenced with Peter Wood welcoming everyone to his home. He then performed his favourite version of Paul Curry’s Out of This World which doesn’t need leader cards and doesn’t have a switch of piles in the middle. His presentation was based around intuition. He then got Bruce to shuffle the cards, he asked Wendy, a visitor, to think of a number and Anthony to think of a card, Anthony is to say stop when he sees his card. Its miraculously at Wendy’s thought of number. Bruce Glen was our next performer with his big budget act. He used two packs of cards, one red and one blue. He gave Robert a choice of decks, both Robert and Bruce held their cards under the table, a card was removed from the centre by both decks, turned face up on top of the decks which were then cut. When ribbon spread on the table both cards were the same. The piece and quiet was broken by the sounds of Australia’s iconic bird, the kookaburra laughing at us from a nearby tree. Was it amazed by Bruce’s effect? It was soon followed by the cooing of doves, but these weren’t in the trees, they belonged to Peter and with his new bunny are part of his family magic show.
Our next performer was Conway Restom who claims to love science. He told us that 25% of the entire universe including earth is made up of Dark Matter. On his phone Conway has installed a new prototype “Dark Matter App”, turning his phone into dark matter generator with the dark matter coming from his phone portal. He showed four blank faced cards, a hole appears in one, then another and another and then all four. The holes then turned into large black dots, or puddles of dark matter. This is Conways routine and presentation of “The Incredible Appearing Nothing” by Christophe Fouquet. Conway then borrowed two packs of cards, one red, one blue backed. Conway chose a card and a spectator chose one out of the other pack. They proved to be the same card.
We have missed Clement Kwok at our recent meetings but tonight he was back with some very impressive magic. Clement had his cards shuffled, he located the two of spades, it vanished then appeared in the card box. Clements eye glasses vanished and they appeared in the box, then a fork appeared in the box. With the assistance of Bruce the fork started to bend in Clement’s hands, then it bends more, it is bent double. Clement straitens it and then mysteriously the fork is shown to have a twist in it, then one of the tines bends then all the tines bend. Clement then performed a medley of effects with two silver rubber bands and a safety pin. Clement linked the bands around the fingers of both hands forming the rungs of a ladder between his hands. The safety pin was linked over the top rung, it moved from top to bottom, then again in slow motion then again but at lightning speed. Clement then performed Crazy Man’s Handcuffs first with the two bands in his hands then with one band linked over a spectators two forefingers. Clement concluded by turning two bands into one. He then introduced his friend and visitor to our meeting, Chap who is a young back packer from Argentina traveling around Australia. He came out shuffling his cards, he asked Anthony to name a card, where do you want it, Anthony said top and there it was. Chap asked John to “name a card”, “where do you want it”, “second from the top”, and it was there. Chap asked Bruce to cut some cards, Chap said, “35”, the packet was counted and there were 35, he asked Robert to “name a number”, he said, “number 22”, “and now a card”, Robert chose the three of spades and it was at the twenty second position in the pack. Chap had just shown as a fine example of Jazzing with a mem. deck. It was the day after Argentina had one the FIFA World Cup against France, so we all congratulated Chap as he returned to his seat.
Our last performer was Barry Abkin, he told a story of coincidence, what is it? He used two packs of cards, one red, one blue. Anthony chose the blue, Barry kept the red. Despite both packs being handled and examined by Anthony, both Barry and Anthony repeatedly shuffled the same card to the top. For the finale a jumbo duplicate of the last card is produced from a large red envelope that was on display from the start. This was Barry’s performance of John Archer’s “The Laura Buxton Co-incidence.
After the performances it was time for our deserts before we wished everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy 2023 and we all again thanked Peter Wood for organising this amazing Christmas party at his home.
Peter Rodgers
Sydney Magic Club 