And for his next trick...

... he will perform the same one that a friend of his did at a wedding which caused a Bishop to have a heart-attack and be wheeled out of the reception. Last night I went to a friends house for a pre-Christmas meal. One of the other guests is a magician. Over a glass of mulled wine in the kitchen he mentioned the Bishop story and I asked him which trick the friend had done. Actually, he said, the trick was part of his routine and would I like to see it. Of course I said yes. So, after the meal (beautiful shepherds pie, just in case you were wondering) Magician Friend began his routine. He asked me to pick a card and he made it appear from various places. He then asked me to sign it and made it jump around all over the place, including appearing from inside a zipped compartment of his wallet, which was inside his coat pocket. Finally, he got me to hold the entire deck of cards between my hands, extracted my signed card from between my closed hands, showed it to me and then casually remarked that actually, he'd turned all the cards into a block of glass. No really, he had. Would I like to open my hands. With a distinct sense of dread and adrenaline, I opened my hands. No cards but a block of perspex. No wonder the Bishop had a heart-attack. I almost had one myself. Amazing. I was filled with a mix of wonder (apparently I watched the whole routine looking like a small child) and humiliation that I had sat in front of a room full of people and allowed myself to be tricked. Magician Friend gave me my signed six of clubs and I have pinned it to the notice board to remind myself of the day I went out for supper and someone managed to swap a deck of cards for a block of glass within my closed hands under my very nose and I didn't even notice.