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.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

SPRING CLEANING - OR WISHFUL THINKING?

I expect you've spent your Easter break with other people or by going out and having fun. Not me... Rob and I are off, very soon, to New England, USA, so I've spent the weekend trying to get the house into some form of cleanliness and tidiness - something I find almost impossible.

My problem is: 1. I hate housework 2. I am a hoarder 3. If I put things away I lose them and can't find them when I need them 4. I hate housework 5. I like buying stuff!

For two days I sorted through loads and loads of videos. I put every single one into the machine and checked what was on it before deciding whether it needed to be kept to be watched again before throwing, kept to be transferred to DVD or whether it should be consigned to the box for disposal. Now that is done I wonder how long the box (well, two boxes now) will sit in the living room until it is taken to the tip?

Today I concentrated on the top floor of the house - bathroom and our bedroom. At least the carpets and skirting boards, walls and light fittings are now dust free but the piles of everything are another matter entirely.

I do love to see other people's immaculate houses. They have a minimum of items on display, practically no ornaments, photos, etc. No books or DVDs sprawled over coffee tables - just lots of tasteful space. Would I like a house like that? Well in theory I would but to do that all the bears would have to go at the very least because at present they occupy the tops of the sofas, the dining room chairs, the long john dressing table mirror, the bed, the top of the bedroom TV, the conservatory settee not forgetting the Cloth Tag pottery bears on the shelf over the radiator.

Then there are the books which are piled two deep and eight high on the two bookshelves I currently own as well as on the floor by the bed and in the drawers under the divan.

The office is an even bigger tip; everything is piled on the floor on both sides of my chair which I can only move forward and backwards in order to sit at my desk which can't be seen under the plethora of notebooks, diaries, magic props, stationary items - and yes there is a computer which even has some shy speakers which peer shortsightedly from between the miniature paper tote bags which are there to hold all the pens, pencils, paper clips and other hardware needed for today's paperless society!

Oh I'd love a clear and open workspace, I'd love my office equipment to gleam at me in the joy of being easily accessible but I doubt this will ever happen. I did start today, in the bedroom, trying to be a bit ruthless. To put it more accurately I filled a small plastic bag with three items of clothing I have now decided I can live without for the rest of my days. I also demoted a couple from a vast collection of lipsticks and some almost empty tubes of makeup base as well as several dried out mascara wands. But I think that's it; I won't be throwing anything else away today as that was hard enough to contend with for a while.

So I'll continue to keep everything, I'll continue to buy when I'm away and the things I buy will live happily in their plastic bags with airport logos and the names of strange sounding shops written on them until the next time I clean up and find them full of 'new' toys ready to be oohed and ahhed over before they return to their little bit of floor space mecca unscathed and still unused but forever new!

Saturday, March 15, 2008

NEWS!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Light Relief?

I am awaiting the electrician.

He is due in an hour. He came yesterday at 11.30 to put up three light fittings, one in the kitchen (three spotlights on a base), one over the dining table (complete with fan) and one in the bathroom. He told us this would be a forty-five minute job......

The kitchen one was put up fairly quickly - but when the current was reconnected it didn't work.... six attempts later and it worked! Thank goodness for that.


The fan one took quite a while to put in place; well, it had two sets of wires, one to operate the bulbs and one for the fan itself. An hour passed and finally it was there - but not working... the electricity was switched off again, some more fiddling on high, switched on and nothing again and again and again and again. At last we had lift-off. Well not quite - because only three of the rotary arms fitted, the final two having such tightly attached screws that nothing could be done today without yet another screwdriver - which was left back home....

Just the bathroom one now - the easiest one of all I was told. Really? No.

The bathroom light was a pain because it is two flights up from the mains switch so all the fiddling was accompanied by electrician running downstairs to flick the switch, then running upstairs to find it didn't work so back down to put it off to carry on with the fiddling.

It works now - well sort of; if you want to go into the guest room you have to switch the bathroom light on first as the former won't work independently.

So I am awaiting the electrician.

He is due in an hour.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

SUCH A LONG TIME!

Gosh - I didn't realise! I haven't blogged at all this year! I can't believe it! From now on I'm going to try and blog once a week at least.

So much is happening this year too....

Already we've spent a couple of days in Nairn, just outside Inverness in Scotland.

Our friends Maggie and Robert, who used to live very nearby, have now moved up there and nagged us to visit - so we did. We had a great time.






The company was excellent and the food was amazing too;


















We had a meal with them at Boath House which was very upmarket and different - some courses served on black granite tiles instead of plates.















A funny moment was a chance meeting with a seagull in Inverness - do they all dance like this?


At the end of last year and the beginning of this I won my first ever magic award. It was the Zodiac Magical Society Challenge Cup and works on challenging the holder to a category of the challenger's choice. I won it and then retained it - but lost it again last week; I wasn't sorry to do so as I had been happy to win it twice, to show it wasn't a fluke!

Now, at the end of this month, we are going to New England for Rob to do a lecture tour. We will only be away for ten days as Rob's brother Pete is getting married two days after we come home but it will be really great fun - it's all been arranged by Bruce Kalver, the incoming Society of American Magicians President whose lecture tour we arranged here in October last.

Then I'm back in the US in July - to attend the International Convention when Bruce will be inaugurated and I'll be going with fellow female magician Kerry Scorah so it's going to be fantastic fun! I'll try to keep a diary so I can blog when I get back.

Meanwhile - there's the Bristol Day of Magic in May with the other magician I'm in love with (Rob is No. 1 of course) coming over from Nashville. So there's plenty to write about soon.