On Saturday I drove up to the rather splendid Carnoustie Golf Hotel in Scotland for a surprise 50th birthday party for Derek. His wife had planned a full weekend with eighteen of their closest friends, and I was asked along to perform some magic for them.
I arrived and had to hide in the car park until they were all in the restaurant before I could take my stuff up to the Hogan suite (more on that later), get ready and come back down for the close up magic session. I approached the table, said hello to Derek and quickly lost the one apprehension I had – you see, Derek had no idea that I was going to be there, and if he didn’t like magic then there was the potential for this to be really quite awkward. Luckily, he loves magic and I did a fun fifteen minute set at his table. Starters arrived, and I returned to the lobby for a few minutes.
Once the tables were cleared again I went through for the second table, and had another blast. This was one of those really fun gigs where everyone is in a good mood and appreciates the magic. This makes my job so much more rewarding, and then it was time to set up in the suite.
I got back to the third floor and the Hogan suite, which is one of the three Presidential suites in the hotel. The first bedroom was bigger than my first flat, add the living space and you are bigger than my second flat, add the second bedroom and you are approaching the size of my first house…
I set up my table, and after a while everyone came up and took their seats for the parlour magic show. Since everyone now knew what to expect (or at least who I was) there was a really good atmosphere in the room and I performed a half hour stand up show with the usual amount of audience participation and a whole lot of laughter.
All too soon it was time to hit the road back home to Edinburgh again. It was one of those gigs where I would happily have stayed all night doing more close up and parlour magic for the group, because they were that much fun 🙂
The Edinburgh Magician.
