As this site grows and the blog develops, I have further ideas for content. While I intend that the blog will have daily posts, they will fall into a few categories: Show news (Zoom/theatre). Show reviews (Zoom/theatre). One off articles that are magic/cardistry related. Regular series. Like cardistry updates, collectable cards and tv show episodes. Non blog site updates e.g new site page or updates. Over time, I expect to have additional content ideas and I will add to the blog. I already have some ideas and just need the opportunity to write the posts and plan them. The Vlog will also likely become more important, particularly for showing collectable cards. If you like the blog and what I am doing, please do visit the site regularly. The intention is to publish daily blogs as long as I have content/ideas to work with. To maintain quality, blog pages will be written in advance and I hope to get a variety of posts on the site. If you want notifications when I post, please create a site log on and become a member so that you can also subscribe to the blog. That way you will receive an email when I post. As always, if you have feedback and ideas, please let me know. And if you like what you see, please comment, like and share. Thanks

Acts appearing this week on episode 5 featured Winston the magician. Age 21 from Venezuela. Series 15 hasn’t been great for magic and Winston helped correct this a bit. A talented magician who displayed a sleight of hand routine, appearing to produce cards from thin air. The performance was dramatic, acting with out of control hands which kept producing cards uncontrollably. No card table, just Winston on a stool amazing the audience. Watch if you get a chance. Available on Netflix in the UK and also on YouTube. Judge and audience reactions were positive and Winston was through to the next round.

Tom has posted via his FaceBook page a reminder about his two shows. Both shows are this Sunday and I have my tickets. If your interested, take a look at the below. I will publish a review early in the week. Visit page. "Looking for something to do this weekend? I’m presenting my first ever interactive, online magic show this Sunday at 17:00 and 19:00. Come and see what it really means to stay “connected” in a global pandemic. Tickets are £11.37 per household and are available below. Limited availability for 19:00 showing." - Tom. And don't forget, Magical Bones is also performing on Saturday. Tickets can be bought by going via his site.

Received an email about a 25% discount off Marvin’s Magic purchases this weekend. The text of the email is as follows. No affiliation to this site and just posting in case your interested. Big savings at www.marvinsmagic.com Another scorching offer to match the weather with 25% off when you visit the Marvin's Magic website. Learn some Mind-Blowing Magic to impress and amaze your family with our awesome Professional Magic Made Easy. Simply use code: MAGIC25 at checkout

With the weekend fast approaching, I have yet another Zoom show booked. This time it is a public Zoom performance of Tom Brace’s show “Connected”. I will write up a mini review after watching the show. This will be my fourth Zoom show after watching Magical Bones perform a couple of times and also Elliot Bibby. Tom is doing two shows this Sunday the 28th of June and tickets are currently still available for the shows. His website indicates that the 7pm show is nearly sold out (at time of writing) and not many tickets left. A 5pm show is also available. Take a look at Tom’s FaceBook page for updates. Also, within the “MagicSeats” website, take a look at the Zoom Magic page. It lists Zoom Magic shows that I know of. If you are aware of a show that is not listed, please tell me. I have reviewed the Zoom listings yesterday and I can confirm that the page is currently up to date. My Zoom Magic page has links to all the artists sites. Take a look and they will detail the booking process. Many of the private bookings are via email exchange. The public Zoom Magic shows tend to have an online ticketing agent. If you haven’t tried a Zoom show yet, general public Zoom shows are the best way to try this medium. Ticket prices are really cheap for these public shows and I have only paid between about £11 to £13 so far per show. Though as the popularity grows for these shows and audiences buy into the medium, I have noticed some price increases. For private shows, fees are varied dependant on the artist but range from about £30 to £300 Some artists also allow you to decide how much you want to pay and they just make a recommendation for the minimum amount. If you haven’t used Zoom before, you can download the app to your phone, desktop or tablet After creating an account, all you then need do is test your setup To join any Zoom Magic event, you should be provided with a link, meeting details and password in advance after purchasing a ticket. Before any shows, you are normally encouraged to attempt to sign on between 5 to 10 minutes prior to the start. But always follow the email instructions that arrive with your ticketing details. You can then switch on your camera and sound, dependent on whether you wish to be seen or not. Certainly for general public shows, whatever you feel comfortable with is best. For private shows and to gain the full interactive experience, camera and sound is recommended. Lastly, a huge advantage of some of the public shows currently available is that for the price, you can have the whole family watching from the same screen. If you book any Zoom shows, let me know how you get on and your views in the comments below.

Looking through all the currently advertised shows in theatres and on Zoom, I have come across the following updates on Wednesday the 24th of June. Zoom and show listing pages updated to reflect the following: Theatre shows have the following cancellations and revised dates showing. Cancellations The 4MG shows on the 31st of July are showing as CANCELLED. John Archer 2020 dates now all show as CANCELLED. Shows still showing from New Year 2021. Revised Dates The Ben Hart shows for September and October are showing as TO BE RESCHEDULED. No further details as yet. Luke Baker September onward shows now RESCHEDULED to February 2021. When reviewing the Zoom shows, I could not see any changes to the advertised listings. If you become aware of any shows or wish to be listed, please let me know. ​ ​

I continue to practice cardistry every day. For those of you who read last weeks blog, I signed up to Steve Faulkner’s training site for magicians. Includes many video course on cardistry, card magic and other related topics. While following my beginners course videos, I realised that Steve also has a course on practice. This was really useful and helps you to determine what your purpose is, and what are you hoping to achieve. What’s great about these videos is that Steve has studied training and development. I did the same about 15 years ago and studied training for about a year. Therefore I find myself relating to the approaches and learning techniques used. I am making sure that I practice everyday but need to start writing down notes and questions etc. or even scribbles, so I have ordered a new note pad. While I have completed the beginners course, I keep replaying the videos as I practice. I have a nice office/man cave to practice in every night on my desk with my card mat. As I have a laptop and monitor in front of me, I will probably set it at a future point in time to start recording so that I can play back and see how I am performing. I was beginning to get confused with all the different names for grips, so I created my own help sheet with a picture of various grips, shuffles etc. That way, I can also use these sheets of pictures to work through my moves and at the same time, attempt to remember the names of all the various manoeuvres. When taking a break from work during the day, I will be able to use these sheets for practising with the cards. A great way of unwinding. A photo example of my instruction/reference sheets that I have prepared is at the bottom of this blog page. Where possible I took my own photos and took others examples from online references such as Steve’s site. Hence I won’t share the entire doc as being used just for my own purposes as part of my learning. Of course, even as a beginner, you find some moves easier or harder than others. I am making good progress with swing cuts (from end grip) and riffling the cards. Dribbling the cards will need lots of practice and is quite hard for me currently. The ribbon spread is going quite well and as I become more successful doing this, I am introducing top card control. To assist with my practising, my first brick of bikes arrived at the weekend. Currently I am using two decks, a blue and red but not sure how long I should expect the cards to last when using daily. I intend to publish regular articles about cardistry on this blog, as soon as I have sufficient new updates to report on.

During the last week, the following Is a summary of what has been updated on the site along with this blog: The Zoom Magic pages were updated on the 17th June and had additional shows added on the page for Magical Bones and Tom Brace. The TV Streaming page was also updated on the 18th of June. I added the show “Death by Magic” featuring DMC to the Netflix listings. Also added ”May contain nuts” on the BBC iPlayer. Single episode about magic, series 3 episode 5. Also on the 18th of June, I updated the tour listings page. According to Ents24, three scheduled Ben Hanlin dates are cancelled and a James Samuel show for later in the year is also currently showing as disabled and you are unable to purchase. On the 21st of June, I added the new Vlog page and made some tweaks to the home page which included adding a new grid of the latest three blog articles. This will then allow direct access to the chosen page. The promo page has also been updated with an Elliot Bibby Zoom picture and new posts also added to the Instagram page. Lastly, I continue to add magicians to the A to Z directory and I have added a site search function on the home page. I have lots of plans to improve the website presentation. While the desktop site is hopefully getting fairly smart, I still need to make tweaks with some of the consistency of the various headers and fonts. It needs to be a bit more uniformed The mobile site does need more work as well and I hope to make some changes with font sizes soon. Let’s just say, some of the fonts on mobile are massive!

While lockdown has of course presented challenges, many of us have used the opportunity to spend time on our hobbies. As well as building this website, I also started to try my hand at magic again. While it is quite straight forward to do some tricks and learn, I want to be able to do it well. As I am particularly interested in card magic, I realised that if I was to hold and manipulate the cards professionally, it takes practice. Searching for tricks and videos to master card control quickly became quite a confusing path. Needing direction, I decided that I should book some lessons in cardistry or sign up to a course. Forgetting tricks for the moment and just learning how to handle the cards and gradually work through moves. Quite a lot of options exist online to learn magic/cardistry. However, finding what is suitable for you is another matter. Sites ranged from online tuition with Zoom to recorded video instruction. I spent a few days researching sites. Even though many good international sites exist, I quickly decided that I wanted a UK based site. Eventually I found a site by magician and motivational speaker Steve Faulkner. His site allows you to watch some of his videos so that you can judge whether you like it or not. Steve has loads of courses in cardistry which he has been creating since about 2013. You can also complete videos in the order that you wish. I am starting as a beginner. Learning the basics from how to hold cards and gradually become familiar with the decks, cutting and moves. The learning is very structured, giving me a pathway to follow. That way, I don’t have to think about what to do next, I can just follow the lesson plan. In addition to the videos, the site is supported by Steve using Facebook and Slack. It looks like regular live coaching sessions are also arranged. Will definitely take part in such a session when the next beginners meet is arranged. If interested, I would recommend you google Steve and his websites. I am trying to practice every night now. Even for short amounts of time. In just a few nights, I can already see the progress I am making. I like to rewatch some of the videos to get the moves correct as I practice. I think the monthly fee to unlock all the content and support is really reasonable and Steve has already been in touch. He encourages questions and interaction between him and members. Check out his site if your interested. Best viewed on a desktop and you can use phones and tablets also: https://steve-s-school-76e5.thinkific.com/bundles/card-magic-course I will keep you all posted on my progress through this blog. Any questions, just let me know.

A little bit late watching episode 3 but I finally got around to it last night. In the UK, you can watch AGT on Netflix. Episode 3 features an act that were hyped as comedy magician‘s - “The Demented Brothers“. Audience and judges reaction was mixed. The act consisted of a routine that while comedic was not actually magic. More of a clever comedic act pretending to be magicians that can’t perform. In episode 4, no magicians featured. Other then Ryan Tricks from the UK, this series of AGT has been weak so far for representing magicians Hopefully it will pick up as no card magicians have featured this year to date. Like the UK, I understand that this series will of course be cut short and just 7 episodes were filmed prior to the lockdown. Later stages will of course be delayed.

I check through the tour listings each week and I can advise of the following. As I suspected in a recent blog post,a new wave of cancellations for shows may unfortunately arise. Please do check directly with venues before attending any booked performances. New cancellations that I have noticed are: According to Ents24, three scheduled Ben Hanlin dates are cancelled. 12th Sept - Newcastle - CANCELLED 17th Oct - New Brighton - CANCELLED 7th Nov - Dartford- CANCELLED The November 21st show at The Quay, Sudbury, Suffolk for James Samuel is currently showing as disabled and you are unable to purchase.

Thank god it is the weekend nearly! Tomorrow (Saturday 20th), I have a private magic Zoom show booked with Elliot. Really looking forward to it. If you haven’t already, checkout his website. Link below. If your not sure about Zoom magic, I would encourage you to try it. I have completed a couple of shows now and I love the interaction. You won’t be disappointed. Magicians are always a friendly bunch, so always enjoyable. I will do a write up on the blog to let you know about the show tomorrow. A mini review if you like. Elliot offers close up magic, family magic shows and of course corporate. Prices are really reasonable as well. Looking forward to the show. https://www.bibbymagic.co.uk/