One of the things I’ve noticed here is the difference between the posts of members who came to magic as wide-eyed still-almost-believe-in-Magic children and adults. Or early teens f it comes to that.

As "grown-ups" when the effect is over, no matter what the level of astonishment, the instinct is to attempt to figure it out. Not simply to think how did that happen, or how did he do that.

As children, we tend think that there’s a bit more to it than the magician doing the sneaky stuff. Magic, of course, what else. Bob Farmer hints at this with his Nickels And Dimes post. My own Magic Money Printing Machine is another example.

In one of the Magic Sets I received for Christmas, or birthday, was a version of "Grandmother’s Necklace". It wasn’t called that and I can’t recall if it had a "real" name. Probably something snappy like three wooden balls with holes in the middle and two pieces of cord. The roughly drawn illustrations got the effect across; it looked totally wonderful. But the text was gobbledegook. But then I was only three at the time.

Mother to the rescue. She took the props and the instructions, whilst I struggled with the Paddle Trick. About quarter of an hour later, she was ready. The balls were threaded on the cord. I tied a knot to make them even more secure. Next thing they were free. An absolute gob-smacker.

As for card tricks, the most sock-blowing was a selected card thing. The pack was dumped into a trilby hat. Then a piece of white rope was dangled in the hat for a few seconds and blow me, out came the selected card snug inside a knotted loop.

This was shown to me by my uncle; he liked Magic, but was not a magician. He’d stumbled across Max Andrews’s Vampire shop in Archer Street London, looked in a bought a fistful of this and that.

He also showed me the Twenty-One Card Trick and something with three piles using (as I later discovered) a blindingly obvious key card.

I’ve seen a lot of Magic over a lot of years, but nothing has created the sense of wonder of those early years.