Friday, July 20, 2012

It is a little after 5:00 and we will be heading out to the train station shortly to meet a former colleague and good friend of mine, Juliet Henderson.  Juliet is coming to Spain to visit with us and from here head to the Canary Islands where she will be teaching for a year.  I am not quite sure whether it is the upcoming academic year or next, but I suspect that it is the 2013-14 academic year.

It has been a quiet week.  We did have lunch at Basílico yesterday and, as always, it was most enjoyable.  We started with a lettuce salad that was served alongside a puffy pastry stuffed with potato and veal and other tasty things.  Our main dish was breaded strips of lomo that had been lightly fried and served alongside some roasted potatoes.  Dessert was an apple crumble topped with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream.  After lunch we walked back in the direction of the house.  Susan needed to stop off at El Corte Inglés so we parted ways when we reached Colón.

At 8:00 I headed out for a meeting of los veteranos, but getting to and from Jerito’s house would turn out to be an adventure.  There was a demonstration last night in Valencia that caused the police to shut off access to many streets and those streets were the closes to Barón de Cárcer.  The bus was late in coming and there were no taxis to be seen.  I walked a few blocks and was lucky enough to find a cab.  When I arrived Pepe and Paquito were already there and Giocdimani would arrive a bit later.

Pepe gave us more details on the recently ended FISM and showed us the gifts that each attendee received along with the gift bag everything came in.  He also showed us an effect he had purchased on the last day of the event.  As it turned out, we spent most of our meeting time just chatting.  At 9:45 we left Jerito’s house in search of a bite to eat.  We decided that Carosel would be a good option and Paquito and I hopped a cab and Pepe and Gioco made their way on their motorbikes.  A number of streets were blocked off and I suggested a route to the cab driver that took us down Borrull and the driver dropped us off a block from the restaurant.

When we arrived Jordi was hosting a reunion of his classmates from some twenty years ago.  There were eighteen to twenty of them seated at an improvised long table.  We found a table for four outdoors and ordered several things from the menu including some patatas bravas, clóchinas, croquetas and two filets that the four of us shared.  As we were finishing our meal Jordi came over and asked if we would do some magic for his friends.  Gioco was a bit reluctant to do so, so I jumped into the gap and volunteered my services.

I have had more successful nights doing magic, but last night was a very good learning experience.  Magic is easy when everything goes right, but the true test of a magician is what he does when things go wrong.  In doing my first effect where the Ace through 5 of Spades apparently switch their order as I was about to reveal the climax a gust of wind came up and blew the five cards off the table.  I reset the cards and repeated the effect successfully.  My second effect went without a hitch.  As I was about to do my third and last effect I discovered that I had grabbed the wrong deck when I left the house earlier.  I improvised an effect and, unfortunately, one card was out of place and what was supposed to be the chosen card was not, but I managed to find an out that appeared to be the actual ending to the effect.  I ended my performance, such as it was, at 12:40 and quite exhausted I excused myself and headed back home.  I was too keyed up to fall asleep and I tossed and turned for a couple of hours before I finally drifted off to dreamland.