Mandy Davis - Diva of Deception

Mandy Davis - Diva of Deception - is a professional close up magician working for banquets, dinners, receptions, weddings, bar/batmitzvahs, private parties etc. A member of The Inner Magic Circle, she serves on their ruling Council and currently holds several posts. . Mandy is also a member of Equity and twice honoured with the Society of American Magicians' Presidential Citation.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

THE LETTER GAME - TEN LIKES AND DISLIKES BEGINNING WITH 'C'

Two posts in 24 hours - unheard of!

But Brian has sent me the letter C so that I can join in his latest game: I have to list ten likes and dislikes.

Likes:

CHOCOLATE!! Dark chocolate and Cadburys' too.... Green and Blacks, Bournville, Fruit and Nut - oh and Easter Eggs, hollow ones. Elena handmade Belgian chocolates - the ones with the fresh whipped cream in the middle or the orange peel dipped in lush bitter chocolate. Buttons, excuse me taking Brian's friend in vain (but that's where Buttons got his name!) - I love buttons; and Rolos; and Flakes and...


don't like white chocolate though...

OK - enough now, got it?

CASUALTY!
The programme of course - the name of which makes my friends in the US just fall about laughing... but I've been hooked since episode one and it's the only thing i go out of my way to record and watch avidly. I've never got into Holby City or Scrubs or any of the other hospital based stories, just Casualty and I don't really know why. I tried E.R. for the first three series but lost interest, yet I've stuck with my favourite through floods, bombs, fires and that was just the building. There have obviously been all manner of accidents coming through their doors and I can never cease to admire the way the doctors and nurses get so involved in the patients' lives - finding lost relatives, mending broken hearts - something I really don't believe happens in real life. But ever since I was hooked on the Sue Barton Nursing books as a small child this kind of thing thrills me - as long as I don't have to watch the gory bits and everything ends happily.

COMPUTERS Yes, I know I'm always moaning as iPhoto gets jammed yet again. And I still can't put a heading on this before I start blogging as it freezes my browser and I have to start again. Yet I love my computer and the way it has opened up the world, bringing friends from overseas into my home on a virtual basis. It means I can skype my closest mates who have moved to Bermuda and Spain, catch up with cousins in Canada (yes that's a C word too) and make new friends on the magic lists who I can talk to and swap files of music and film with. Most of all I love the fact I can write stuff and it's there without me having to search desperately only to find I can't read back what I've written in my dreadful scrawl. Knowledge, shopping, wriitng and friendship - these are a few of my favourite computer things!

COCO POPS This is my preferred cereal and I start every day with 30 gms of these. I measure them out ever since I discovered that this amount was the same as having slightly more of a more sensible cereal. It means I can have my favourite and still feel good about having an amount that fits the weightwatchers diet - not that I'm losing weight on it, maybe because this is the only thing I weigh!

Maybe this list is turning into things people don't know about me!

CLOTHES I love clothes, not washing and ironing them obviously but the buying of them and the wearing of them and the sheer owning of them. I can't afford expensive ones but that doesn't matter; sometimes it's more fun to find a bargain. I was brought up with loads of clothes, my dad was a designer and had his own factory and then had a market stall. His mum, my grandma, made me new dresses every week and my mother's dad, a tailor, made me coats and tailored suits from a very young age. So I had new stuff all the time. I rarely bought anything as a teenager, mostly boots and shoes and undies, the odd jumper too. My dad used to go to buy stock for the stall and mum and I would deplete it thoroughly on a Friday night when he came home with the new styles. I am not one for wearing classic expensive items over and over again; I need new things all the time and no matter if they are only fit for one season - just bring on the next! The only time I own better stuff is when I go to look at the new arrivals and earmark something to watch when the sales arrive; if it's still there, at a greatly reduced price, then I can buy it knowing I have a bargain. That's the way to do it!






Dislikes:

CHEESE - Yes, I know I'm strange but I hate the taste of it in any form or flavour or breed. I hate cheese with a vengeance!

COFFEE - I really hate coffee and anything flavoured with it! As a child I used to have a cup of coffee on every Birthday in the hope that being a year older would mean that I'd acquired the stature for this adult drink of choice - but I never did!


CATS - cant' help it. I'm a dog lover but cats? How can you love a creature that jumps on your lap and then digs spikes into your legs to keep its balance? I find that anti-social indeed. My best friend got a kitten, which I think I'm going to meet on Sunday, and telephone conversations went like this:

"Hi it's me! How are you? Ow, ow, ow,ow!'
Is that animal hurting you?' 'No, he's really sweet and so tiny - ow, ow, ow, ow!'
'Is he digging his claws into you?' 'They aren't real claws he's only a baby - ow, ow, ow, ow!'

I rest my case!

CREEPIE-CRAWLIES - All of them. I have a fear of spiders and worms and a revulsion for anythiing that crawls on the ground. I'm tolerant of flying things such as wasps, daddy-long-legs (which I can pick up and 'save' others from), moths but if it doesn't have wings it has no business being within two miles of me. I can hold snakes though, they don't bother me at all.

CHEATS - I dislike people who cheat in any form. I dislike hearing about those cowboy builders and plumbers who do old people out of money. I dislike people who get past me in a queue or get served first in a restaurant if I've been there a while before they arrived. I dislike people who get awards which are unjustified, leaving behind others who should've been honoured years ago (you know who you are!)

Well there are five likes and five dislikes starting with the letter C - I'm not sure if ten likes and dislikes meant that or ten of each but I'm publishing these so far and if Brian says it has to be five more of each then watch out for The Sequel...

Friday, March 23, 2007

WHERE HAVE ALL THE READERS GONE?

Mustn't start with a title, mustn't start with a title, mustn't....

Oh hi! It's such a pain; don't know if any of you suffer from this? Since being coerced into the new all singing all dancing form of google blogger or whatever it's become, every time I try to blog - and I start by putting a title in the appropriate box - the program freezes and I can't go any further so I have to log out and start again! So annoying.... anyway back to the plot....

I was reading the Guardian review pages today and I was fascinated - all these books which sound interesting in the short pieces describing them but in reality are probably very very boring indeed. So boring, in fact, that the paper also has to publish a separate list entitled 'top ten mass market books'. In other words, I'm not totally stupid - I'm just reading what the mass market reads and enjoying the tasters of more highbrow reads by studying the Guardian critics instead.


For instance - one wrote about ships logbooks and the details he gave were fascinating - but there is no way I'd want to trawl the spidery writing on the originals. Another book dealt with the Windrush immigrants and their treatment here in the 50s - another subject that does interest me but not in the heavy language most likely used in the discussed volume.

So I read Marian Keyes and Cathy Kelly - so what? I like them, I like to curl up with a book last thing at night, whether bedtime is midnight or 3 a.m, and unwind with simple plots and easy to understand words. I like Dickens too, and Shakespear and Austen and... - but that's not the point. Reading from the top ten of the 'mass market' doesn't make me an unintelligent person - or does it?

And another thing - Round Robin Readers!

You've never heard of them? Oh yes you have....

I thought it was a super idea - I got a letter in the post with just two names attached to it. The premise was this:

You send ONE book to the first name on the list, take them off the list and the second person becomes the top one. Then you add your name and photocopy the letter (on a separate sheet so it was easy to do) and send it to six of your friends who read. They then send one book to the person on the top and leave them off and add their own name and you were now top of the list - and you'd receive 36 books! Brilliant! Either you'd get stuff you'd never tried but might do so if it landed on your doorstep - or the local charity shop would do well... or Ebay!



So what happened? I sent out six copies to six friends I know read books:

1. Got a call saying this person wasn't prepared to send out 36 books! When I patiently explained it would only be one, they were miffed and still didn't want to play as they only like the books they choose.

2.Person no. 2 told me that they didn't believe they had any friends that read!

3. Person no. 3 called me and said: "I'm gonna kill you! Why did you send me this? I'm not doing it!' No reason, nothing...

4. Person no. 4 emailed to say mother was in hospital, sister just come out, other sister on way from abroad; hadn't had time to read my letter.... didn't expect to!

5 and 6 are ominously quiet....

and nothing has arrived here. :(

But don't you think it was a brilliant idea? `Or is it just me?

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

BRIAN'S BLOG-TAGGED ME!

It's all Brian Sibley's fault! He tagged me! Basically he 'tagged' several bloggers and we have to come up with five things that people don't know about us.

I have two problems with this:

First of all it's taken me several days to get blogger to let me in - I inadvertently changed to the new system and now, although it recognises all my passwords (two sets now), it doesn't let me actually type in the new post box. I can put in the title but then it won't let me into the dialogue area and freezes the browser! Well - I think I've fooled it now! I didn't put a title - but it could be that when I get to the end of this it won't publish it and all will be in vain. I shouldn't even be doing this as I've a magazine to produce by the end of the week and a new designer/printer to find by next month...

My other problem with being tagged? Well, Brian and his partner David are very good friends and I can't think of anything they doesn't know about me. Maybe that's something that people don't know about me:

THINGS PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME (1)

I don't hide anything - I can't! However I'm feeling at any time shows on my face and I share everything that happens in my life so there are NO SECRETS!

So this makes it all very difficult to find five things; I bet the rest of you have no trouble. I've thought and thought. Maybe I could list... no, Brian and David know that already. Maybe... no, they know that too.

So my list now reads:

THINGS OTHER PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME APART FROM BRIAN & DAVID - OH AND ROB, MY FIANCE (nos. 2 - 5):

2. I have a grown up son who lives in Arizona with a wife who is 3 weeks older than I am!

3. I used to drive a Volvo with a trailer on the back like a small caravan; it was my dad's and was hanging space for the dresses he sold in St. Albans market. I tell you this who have seen me park!!

4. I got the writing bug when I won a poetry competition in Princess comic. It got me £10/- (50p - there's age for you!) and it was reprinted in the local paper and the Jewish Chronicle - I was considered a writer of great humour!

5. My great uncle was a news editor for ITN and I visited their offices when they were in Kingsway and I met all the great newsreaders of their day, probably the first batch who had become household names.

Now I've written all of those boring things I can go and look at everyone else's as they'll be very interesting and make me want to change mine. Visit Brian's blog for the link to the others - i'm sure he'll post the link to his own on here so you can all go and enjoy.

PS - I've just wasted almost an hour trying to add photos to this blog and it won't let me!!!!

PPS - And now I have to blog-tag five people and I don't know how to do this. I don't even know five bloggers! I would like to tag John van der Put, Richard Pinner, Rob Cox.... but I guess they've already been tagged? If not - guys there are only three of you but you are 'it' now!