COMPETITION
A meal with a magician
Jaspistos
IN COMPETITION NO. 2019 you were invited to describe a meal with a magician.
There must be many such occasions in literature, but the only one that springs to mind was ended by that splendid stage direction: Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariel like a Harpy, claps his wings upon the table, and, with a quaint device, the banquet van- ishes. That marvellous children's book My Friend Mr Leakey by J.B.S. Haldane atheist, Marxist, scientific hero, and the only sufferer from cancer to have written a successfully funny poem about it — is shamefully out of print. Mr Leakey's feast is memorable. He is aided by his two ser- vants, Oliver the octopus, who with his eight arms offers simultaneously water, lemonade, beer and four different wines, and Pompey the dragon, about a foot long, who lives in the fire and wears asbestos boots. "By the way," remarked Mr Leakey, as he poured sauce out of his hat over the turbot, "I don't know whether you've noticed anything queer about this dinner." ' The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus bottle of The Mac- allan The Malt Scotch whisky goes to Mike Morrison. Marvello's white-gloved hands danced above the platinum epergne, teasing particoloured plumes of flame from the seven fluted candles. We gasped. Our host smiled politely as he straight- ened a fork here, a spoon there. 'Begin, my friends,' he exhorted. We stared, as bowls filled without human intervention; petits pains sliced and buttered themselves; parmesan drifted gen- tly down to the surface of the soup. Similar chthonic forces ensured that our wine glasses remained permanently charged. Silent glances were exchanged: phenomena such as these tran- scended mere illusion. Dinner continued thus, each course materialising and serving itself as the used crockery disappeared. Marvello ate nothing, preferring to monitor our disbelief from a faded fireside armchair. Presently he spoke: must leave you now, to host another dinner in another dimension. Adieu.' His armchair was instantly vacant. The candlelight modulated
from cerise to apple-green. (Mike Morrison)
Lunch with Geraldo is always a performance. This time he materialised at my elbow wearing a white satin suit, spoiled only by a small red spot on the sleeve. 'Silly girl. Got too near the saw,' he muttered, 'and magic stain-removers don't work. I could sue under Trade Descriptions.' He flapped his napkin and a dove fluttered out. Sorry,' he said as the waitress hustled it off, puz- zled. 'Forgot.' He perused the menu. 'Never touch rabbit,' he confided. 'You see too many of them in my line of work. Or' — he glared at his napkin — 'pigeon. And the bombe surprise never is, alas.' So, as usual, we went to the carvery Geraldo enjoys making the forks bend, to the horror of the staff. One good thing about Geraldo — before he disappears he always picks up the bill, though I'm not sure he pays. Amex, Visa, Diners — he can't resist showing off his
three-card trick. (D.A. Prince) I spied you in my specular stone,' Dr Dee announced. 'Thought you might fancy lunch.' Leading me into the vast kitchen, he proudly showed me his strange batterie de cuisine athenors, cucurbits, bains-marie, innumerable furnaces. The heat was intense. I'm afraid the soup, or lac virginis, was clear as crystal and tast- ed of nothing at all. While we ate it he expound- ed the recipe for braised breast of pelican refined, calcined, reverberated, decocted and endlessly simmered over the gentlest heat. (Equi clibanum,' he whispered confidentially. `Horse-droppings.') Fine as this egregious dish was, with its unctuous, inexplicable sauces, I looked forward to the sweet course, which (uncannily foreseeing my arrival) he had labori- ously prepared for no less than forty days. I for- get the technical detail. At last he flung off the cover with a flourish. `Trismegistus be praised! The Great Work is done!'
Treacle pudding. Pure gold!
(Martin Woodhead) The Young Magician's set was such a success, it had to be brought to the table during Christmas dinner. The trick spiders convinced only poor Chloe, who refuses to wear her glasses. She fled screaming when one crawled from the sprouts. Somehow a bottle of claret got poured down the sink during the botched water-into-wine proce- dure and Grandmother, gamely pretending she hadn't spotted the exchange, cracked a tooth on a stone potato. My efforts with the water-jug, when I failed to realise that the flaming pudding was not part of the Young Magician's repertoire, were quickly forgiven. We ate satsumas instead. For his tour de force, Darren attempted to remove the tablecloth without disturbing plates, glasses etc. After he was sent upstairs, we cleared up the mess. I drove Chloe to hospital. Stitching her cuts took hours but, when we returned, several diners were still suffering unfortunate after-effects from salted coffee.
(Giles Ewing) `Remarkable soup,' I said. `Actually,' Dr Zauber answered, 'it contains a spice known only to the jinn by the source of the Nile. I had it flown in by 24 golden swallows. But you wouldn't believe that, would you?'
'No,' I agreed pityingly, 'I'm afraid I wouldn't.' `How do you find the monkfish?' he asked later.
`Excellent,' I said. 'Clever how you managed to fix these tails together. I can't even see the join.'
The climax was a magnificent joint of meat on a silver dish. 'Magic beef,' said Dr Zauber.
This, I felt, was getting childish. 'Lots of peo- ple can find beef on the bone,' I said. 'Resource- ful, yes, but hardly magic.'
`You know,' he remarked as I dug in, 'I think you'll find you enjoy this fore-rib even more than usual.' He took a napkin and leaned towards me. `You've got gravy on your muzzle,' he said gen-
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