The Peppers and the International Magic Guys

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter 1 – The “Trick Of All Tricks”

Chapter 2 – Mind Magic

Chapter 3 – The Costsnippas Convenience Store

Chapter 4 – Preparations

Chapter 5 – The “Houdini Secret”

Chapter 6 – The Trunk with the Secret Panel

Chapter 7 – A Strict “No Children” Policy

Chapter 8 – The International Magic Guys

Chapter 9 – Stuck

Chapter 10 – Secret Escapology

Chapter 11 – The Greatest Show on Earth

Chapter 12 – The Cage of Possibilities

Chapter 13 – A Mouse, a Lion and One Hundred Doves

Chapter 14 – A Magnificent Day

Afterword by Dr Pompkins

Coming Soon

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Copyright

About the Publisher

Tell your friends that sugar lumps are magnetic; as you place a full bowl in front of you, pick up one lump, then “stick” it to another and hold both aloft.

Watch your pals’ frustration as they try to do the same!

Of course, you prepared a lump beforehand with a small dab of butter, but your friends are not to know that…

If you are reading this book then undoubtedly you have a thirst to learn the secrets of the great magicians who perform such tricks regularly. I, Dr Pompkins, famed for tricks including my one-legged straitjacket escape act in a telephone box full of water and 25 man-eating lizards, can teach you some of them.

Read on, dear performer, and you too could be fi lling audiences with astonishment and joy. If you enjoy magic, and I believe that you must do, then walk beside me on this fantastical journey and we shall see great sights and experience true wonders.

In all totality,

Uncle Potty was impossibly old and extremely tall. As a consequence, his sleeves reached his elbows and his trouser hems were always by his shins. He found it difficult to navigate those tiny waistcoat pockets with such long fingers and when he started to become anxious – like now – his hair would stick up on end, looking like crazy woollen worms on a roller-coaster ride. Uncle Potty’s eyebrows also seemed to have been knitted – to form one gigantic, fluffy strip. He had a loud voice and a basic theatricality. He could not have been anything other than a magician, although the rest of his family were a roaring success in the dry-cleaning business.

However, as thrilling as it was having a magician in the house, Esmé had begun to notice that most of Uncle Potty’s tricks seemed to end in disaster. Worryingly,

Uncle Potty had taken over the kitchen at the Peppers’ home all morning and was now standing by the kitchen table, ready to perform his latest act. Uncle Potty had so far removed the items in his way – Esmé’s homework notebook, a library book about wildlife, the Peppers’ laptop and some sticks that had yet to serve a purpose – and put them on the floor. In their place was a large bowl of water and five different fruits placed in a line – a kiwi, a melon, a medium-sized pineapple, an apple and a tangerine. The fruits were a little squashed and soggy and Uncle Potty had brightly coloured stains all over his shirt.

“I have discovered the trick of all tricks,” announced Potty, long arms in the air. “It involves making a watch disappear, then to be revealed in a piece of… fruit.”

Esmé gave Potty an encouraging look, even though the trick sounded quite complicated.

“What’s the time, Esmé?” asked Uncle Potty, in a dramatic voice. Esmé glanced at the extremely reliable watch that her mum had given her when she got a high grade in last year’s maths test and announced, “Half past twelve.”

Esmé waited for Uncle Potty’s next line, but instead Monty popped his head up from under the table, where he was supposed to be hiding. He handed Uncle Potty a long strip of paper.

“What’s that?” Esmé asked.

“Nothing,” said Monty. “You weren’t supposed to see.”

“Please get back under the table, Monty,” said Uncle Potty, politely but firmly. “I have the item now.”

Monty reluctantly disappeared again. “Ahem, thus we have safely concluded that it is half past twelve,” announced Uncle Potty. “May I see your watch, Esmé?”

Raising her left wrist, Esmé revealed her treasured Timex. Uncle Potty quickly unsnapped the watch from Esmé’s wrist before she could stop him and hid it behind his back. There was a scuffling sound as he handed the watch to Monty.

“Time is an extraordinary thing!” said Uncle Potty, even louder. “It reminds us that the bus is late, it flows with the seasons and it, er, gives us wrinkles.”

“Could I have my watch back, please?” Esmé asked, suddenly realising her watch was going to be hidden in a piece of soggy fruit, which might do it more harm than good.

“Of course!” replied Uncle Potty, searching his multi-coloured waistcoat pockets for something.

“Aha, your elegant timepiece!” said Uncle Potty, as he retrieved the now-crinkled strip of paper and balanced it on Esmé’s wrist. It had a badly drawn clock face on it,

showing the time: 12.30pm.

“This isn’t my watch, Uncle, it’s a piece of paper,” said Esmé. The strip quivered on her hand and then fell off.

“Well observed, young Esmé. So where is your real watch?” Uncle Potty spoke excitedly now. He picked up an apple. “Shall I ask the magic tangerine?”

“That’s not a tangerine…” Esmé noted.

“Oh, er, yes.” Uncle Potty tried to cover himself. “Just a little joke,” he smiled. “I will now dip all the fruit into the bowl of water to show you that your watch is not inside any of them.

“Take this apple for instance,” Uncle Potty continued, dunking the apple in the water. “Your watch is not in here! Hurrah!”

There was another scuffling sound and the tangerine started wobbling on the table.

An object fell on the floor with a tiny clang – a broken-watch sort of clang.

“I can’t do it!” whispered Monty audibly from under the table. “It won’t go in the hole.”

Esmé winced. She hoped Uncle Potty was not about to make a big mistake. What was happening to her watch?

“Pick another fruit,” Uncle Potty said to Esmé. “Maybe the kiwi?”

Esmé looked blank, but Uncle Potty seized the kiwi anyway and dunked it energetically into the bowl of water.

“No watch in here!” he hollered. “Shall I try the tangerine, finally?”

Esmé looked at the fruit trembling on the tablecloth. She assumed Monty was trying to stuff her watch inside it. But maybe this was a double bluff – her watch was in someone’s pocket. Or maybe the trick involved an optical illusion and the water wasn’t really water, but something dry. But Esmé feared the worst.

“Could I just have my Timex back, please?” Esmé asked.

“Of course,” Uncle Potty replied, picking up the tangerine from which Esmé’s watch strap dangled.

“My watch!” said Esmé and made a grab for the strap before Uncle Potty could submerge it in the water. But as she did so:

Shhhhlooop!

The bowl tipped over and water went everywhere – on to the table, Monty, the laptop on the floor, Esmé’s homework, the library book, the sticks…

“My sticks!” said Monty, appearing sodden from under the table.

“Your sticks? Look at my homework! Look at the laptop! Mum and Dad will kill us.” Esmé grabbed a tea towel and desperately started mopping water from the laptop, then her homework notebook. “Everything’s ruined!” she cried.

Uncle Potty started to tremble.

“Oh, me, oh, my… Monty, find some more teachers, er I mean tea cloths. I’ll go and get a sponge. Oh, Esmé, I’m terribly sorry.”

Uncle Potty handed Esmé the tangerine, with her watch half-stuffed inside. “I hadn’t meant for the bowl of water to be so… full.”

Esmé took the fruit-splattered Timex, sticky and dripping, and wiped it with her sleeve. The second hand had definitely stopped; there was no ticking sound. Esmé was crestfallen. It had been a very accurate watch.

“I’ll save up and buy you a new one,” said Monty, wiping the library book with an old towel. “I’ll go out and perform some street magic.”

Uncle Potty appeared from the garden with the mop that had a wobbly handle. “Or we could write our own magic book, Monty, and make a fortune!”

“Brilliant!” said Monty. “I’ll go and get a pen.”

As kind as these offers were, Esmé did not think that they were going to provide an immediate solution to the problems in hand. Things were getting out of control. The living room was becoming cluttered with magic books, the stairs covered in little plastic boxes with false panels and double hinges – and Uncle Potty kept throwing his stage clothes everywhere, ignoring the designated dirty washing bin. Now things were being damaged – Esmé’s homework, her watch, the laptop… Was the computer under guarantee? How would the family ever afford a new one? Esmé had been using it to help write a homework assignment about beluga whales on it. It was probably lost for ever. Esmé sighed loudly. She mustn’t get too upset. It wasn’t really Uncle Potty and Monty’s fault – it was Esmé who had actually knocked the water bowl. But Esmé did not think that anything would change until drastic measures were taken.

A Ping-Pong ball is best for this trick.

The ball is held in one hand, then suddenly glides through the air to the other.

The secret? Thread a piece of black thread through the ball – the forefingers of both hands hold the loop taut, forming a sort of track along which the ball slides. The lightness of the Ping-Pong ball is an asset to this trick, as your friends will see.

Just do not let them stand too close to you…

The golden rule that any magician knows is never, ever, to repeat a trick to the same audience. Once the element of surprise is missing, the audience – or at least part of it – will work out how the trick is done. It only takes a slight difference from one performance to the next to see the mechanics of the act itself. As I was saying to Mrs Dr Pompkins only yesterday over a nice glass of sherry and a Chelsea bun – repetition is the enemy of surprise.

In all totality,

That in itself was not a huge issue. The real issue was that Esmé had been subjected to non-stop magic for the last few days and she was beginning to feel overawed. As Uncle Potty stood mopping in the kitchen, Esmé thought back to the cause of the current trouble: Dr Pompkins.

On the morning that he arrived, exactly four days ago, Uncle Potty gave Monty a book called Dr Pompkins – Totality Magic, as a source of magical inspiration for his new assistant. As soon as he opened the musty pages of the book, Monty was enraptured.Sitting in the armchair in the living room, he immediately insisted on trying Pompkins out on Esmé. The first thing that he wanted to try, Monty explained, was “a highly simple card trick, in all totality”.

“Pick a card, any card,” he said, producing a deck that he splayed into an irregular fan shape with his fingers.

Esmé chose the Jack of Hearts, memorised it and put it back into the deck carefully.

“And now, my magic shuffle!” said Monty.

Monty had read something about shuffling the cards in a certain way, which actually meant not shuffling them at all. For a few seconds Monty shifted the cards from one hand to the other, without actually changing the order. He kept a watch on Esmé’s card all the way through.

However, eagle-eyed Esmé noticed what he was doing – or rather, what he was not doing.

“Are you shuffling properly?” she asked.

“Just keep thinking of your card, Esmé,” Monty replied. “Do not forget.”

Monty fixed his twin sister with what was supposed to be a hypnotic expression, but which looked closer to someone trying to contain a burp. “Magic is supposed to make people ‘suspend their disbelief – to believe things they wouldn’t ordinarily believe’. I read that in Dr Pompkins,” he said.

“I do believe,” replied Esmé. “I believe that you are not shuffling properly on purpose.”

Monty picked – a card from the middle of the deck – it was the Jack of Hearts.

“See!” said Monty. “I just need to take some time to get the technique right, the sleight of hand.”

“Yes, maybe that’s all it needs,” said Esmé, who didn’t want to dampen her brother’s enthusiasm.

Montague Pepper picked up Dr Pompkins’ book and silently started on a new chapter. Esmé carried on with her summer homework assignment, the one which was based around beluga whales and the fact that a scientist in Japan had discovered they could understand five basic words, which included “bucket” and “goggles”. Esmé decided to draw a large picture of a beluga whale, which she did carefully – adding arrows that pointed to parts of the animal, for instance its huge brain, a fin and the bit where she thought the ears might be.

After twenty minutes, Monty set the book down.

“I am now going to perform mind magic on you, Esmé,” he said with great seriousness.

“You are in the right frame of mind,” he continued. “You have been so absorbed in your work that your brain is emitting what Dr Pompkins calls ‘mega waves’.”

Although Esmé thought that “mega waves” sounded utterly ridiculous, she did think that “mind magic” was interesting. She had seen a certain Derek Brown perform this sort of routine on TV and she had been fascinated by how he made ordinary people believe in all kinds of nonsense – from ghosts and spirits to making them think that they could rob a bank or steal a race horse. Esmé liked the idea of hypnosis, but only on other people. Would Monty make her fall into a trance – only to find he was not able to wake her up again? And would he also send himself into a reverie? Esmé could not remember Monty doing anything even vaguely hypnotic before, apart from a very odd dance on Christmas Day last year after he’d eaten a large bowl full of profiteroles.

And if Esmé remembered rightly, Monty had been sick fifteen minutes later.

“Look into my eyes,” Monty suddenly commanded. “Go on, really concentrate.”

Esmé did what she was told. Maybe this time she would suspend her disbelief. She looked into Monty’s left eye, then his right, then back to the left again.

“My eyes are wiggling,” she said. “Is that normal?”

The longer Esmé stared, the more her eyes wiggled, and the more she thought about her eyes wiggling the less hypnotised she felt.

Now Monty spoke in a low, long voice: “Your mega waves are definitely vibrating. I want you to draw whatever comes into your mind.” He handed Esmé a blank sheet of A4 paper.

“When you’ve finished, fold the paper once,” Monty said, taking his own sheet of paper. “And I, the great Montague Pepper, will draw the exact same thing using my own mega waves that are connecting with yours, miaow.”

“Draw anything?” asked Esmé. “Anything, miaow,” he replied.

Esmé was not sure she’d heard right. “Anything, miaow?” she repeated.

“Use your, um, miaow imagination,” said Monty quickly, under his breath, to drive the point home.

Esmé raised an eyebrow at her brother. Feeling mischievous, she thought it would be funny to draw a small sausage dog. She did so and folded the paper up twice.

“Once, not twice,” Monty said, sighing. “Oh, well. Now let us show the powers for enjoined mega waves and open our pictures! 1 – 2 – 3!”

Dramatically, they each opened their drawings.

“A cat!” exclaimed Monty proudly of his picture, before realising that Esmé was holding up a picture of a dog – and what’s more, a sausage dog.

Monty looked devastated.

“You didn’t draw a cat,” he said.

“Er, no,” said Esmé. “You kept saying miaow so I thought…”

“…that you’d do the opposite.”

“Sorry, Monty,” Esmé said, realising that her brother was upset. “I’ll try harder next time.”

Four days of magic and chaos later and Esmé was standing in the devastated kitchen, wondering just what to do. Some of the plastic floor tiles looked like they were curling up at the edges under all that water, not helped by Uncle Potty’s low quality mopping. Uncle Potty heard Esmé sigh again and reached into one of his many waistcoat pockets and brought out a bunch of silk flowers.

“To cheer you up,” he said. Esmé tried to smile, but the corners of her mouth were not having any of it.

Uncle Potty reached into another pocket with some difficulty and found a sweetie tube that contained a selection of nuts and bolts. He put it back and then found a five-pound note from another pocket. His waistcoat certainly had a lot of potential.

“Here, Esmé. I know I can’t replace everything, but you could at least get yourself some chocolate from the CostSnippas convenience store,” said Uncle Potty kindly. “Maybe even a new pencil from the stationery shelf.”

“And a homework book as well?” asked Esmé.

“Why not?” said Uncle Potty. “Monty and I will finish clearing up here while you’re away and everything will be shipshape when you come back.”

“OK, thanks,” said Esmé, reaching for her coat.

As she went for the front door, Esmé heard her brother say, “I’ve got a new trick, Uncle Potty,” he said. “What about turning a pineapple into a bicycle?”

Esmé sighed as she stepped out of the door and closed it quietly behind her.

Take a coin between the fingers of your right hand and announce that you will make it disappear.

Wave your left hand over the right, as if to grasp the coin with this hand [misdirection], while secretly keeping the coin in your right hand.

Shouting “Pompkins! Pompkins! In all totality!” might also help startle your audience, as you point your right index finger (still concealing the coin) to the left hand which opens up to reveal... nothing.

It also helps if you change

your name to Pompkins.

Traditionally, the magician adopts a stage name to inspire a certain appeal. My advice in this area: take stock of who you are, what your most interesting qualities might be, and devise a “persona” to fit.

When I became Dr Pompkins I took to wearing a stethoscope and many times was asked to perform vital surgery when out and about. I saved as many lives as those I tragically cut short… Just joking – everyone survived!

In all totality,

While Uncle Potty did the magic, Esmé’s parents were self-confessed hippies – they were spiritual, enlightened, at peace with the rhythms of nature, but perhaps at odds with bringing up a very practical young daughter. They had gone on a woodland holiday as a chance to “reconnect with nature”, which meant incredibly long, arduous walks for hours. As Monty and Esmé were now, at the grand old age of eleven, finding these hikes less appealing, Uncle Potty had been given the job of babysitter for the week.