I haven’t posted for a while, but I have the best reason in the world, a little baby boy called George.
He was born on Monday and both he and his mother are fine. I could write something cheesy about him being magical or something, but it really wouldn’t do him justice.
I still have a few gigs, but other than those, magic is taking a bit of a back seat as we enjoy the new addition to our family.
I’ve started using Google Reader for keeping track of RSS feeds. (RSS is a way of keeping track of updates and changes on websites without visiting them - new content on a site is sent to you. It’s the new Black.)
This is one of many Google services that I use: (more…)
Occasionally, you meet someone who really doesn’t like magic - or more specifically doesn’t like magicians.
I met such a person when I was performing at the weekend and it can be quite off putting when, before you’ve even introduced yourself, someone says ‘You’re the magician aren’t you? I don’t want to see anything thankyou.’
Now this lady was quite nice about it, quite apologetic because she didn’t want to prevent her friends from enjoying the magic. I thought I’d try to win her around so I asked if I could do one quick effect and if she hated it I’d leave.
She said OK and I performed a very convincing coin vanish, which luckily, she didn’t hate. I carried on with the coin routine, making the coin reappear and then vanish again and she decided it wasn’t so bad. I performed another quick magic trick and then moved on, as I didn’t want to ride my luck.
It turned out not only did she have a clown phobia and associated magicians with clowns, but she also had an old boyfriend who had bored her to tears with bad magic. At least it wasn’t personal.
I’ve added a new Christmas Party Magician page to my main site dangifford.com. It just emphasis how good magic is for Christmas parties - but I would say that wouldn’t I? 
I’ve already taken quite a lot of bookings for December and have been doing promotional work to get more, but it’s amazing the number of people you contact who have made Christmas arrangements before July.
I don’t want to, but I think I’ll start Christmas promotion in June (!?) next year.
It’s interesting how people remember magic.
At a gig I performed at tonight an elderly gent was telling me about a bar bet/magic trick that a friend of his (not a magician) showed him years ago. It involved tying a loop of string around the handle of a beer mug and betting that no one could remove it without untying the knot in the string or breaking or damaging either the string or the mug. (more…)