Clear Read Free

the nub )–is Douglas Sinclair MacKenny, and all things being equal, he’s a pretty run-of-the mill kind of guy. He enjoys gardening, Inspector Morse , steam trains and Rugby League. He’s into trad-jazz, Michael Crichton, elasticated waists, Joanna Lumley and lychees. When he was nineteen years old he swam the English Channel. But he doesn’t swim much any more.
    He runs a sub-post office in north Herefordshire (where I was born, 28 long, hard years ago–not on the counter , obviously, let’s not be that literal, eh?–his lone progeny: Adair Graham MacKenny). He’s happily (well, within reason ) married to my mum (Miriam), and he’s fundamentally a very genial, affable, easy-going creature.
    ( Fundamentally –so he doesn’t like black people or queers, but which underachieving 55-year-old, small-minded, Caucasian, Tory-voting cunt does? Huh ? Name me one.)
    Nothing bugs him (not even the long and inexorable queue of pensioners at closing). Nothing winds him up.
    Well… okay , then. So there’s this one thing…it’s a really tiny thing…and it bugs him just a little.
    Is that a fair representation?
    No.
    Fine. Fine . So this particular thing bugs him quite a lot.
    He doesn’t like it, see? It pees him off. It rings his bell. It pulls his chain. It sits–it really sits, and it presses, hard –on his buzzer.
    This thing is (has always been/will always be) a source of unbelievable distress to him. It’s a thing which he loathes / fears / distrusts more than any other. This thing (if you refer to it, idly) makes him clam-up, then blanch, then shake uncontrollably. He’s virtually lethally-fucking- allergic to this thing.
    Any guesses?
    Wheat? Pigeons? Lichen? Jasper Carrott? Dahlias? Lambswool? Beer?
    Nope.
    Douglas Sinclair MacKenny hates–I said he hates –illusionists. And with a passion.
    Let me tell you why.
    Great Yarmouth. Nineteen fifty-nine. The height of the Summer Season. My dad, still then but a boy, is down on the beach with a large crowd of deliriously rambunctious, candy-floss-speeding, bucket-swinging, spade-waving, snotty-nosed comrades. He’s clutching sixpence which his mother has just given him. He is planning to spend this money on- deep breath now, Dad, deeeep breath- a Magic Show!
    The magician or ‘illusionist’ in question is no less (and no more) a man than ‘The Great Carrazimo’. Carrazimo is (by all accounts) fairly competent at the magicianing thing. He does some nifty stuff with doves. He can pretend–very effectively–to chop off his thumb. He can throw his voice. He even (and Dad still doesn’t know how) stole some little girl’s laugh . Seriously. He nicked it (she was temporarily hoarse) and then found it again inside her sticky bag of Liquorice Allsorts.
    This is all good stuff (I know you’re thinking) so why the angst?
    Here’s why: at the end of his show, Carrazimo pulls a stunt which leaves everyone agog. He gets the kids to dig a hole–a deep hole–in the sand. He climbs into the hole. He then tells the kids to fill it up.
    That’s right. The Great Carrazimo is intending to get himself Buried 100 Per Cent Alive.
    The kids–they aren’t a bad bunch–are slightly nervous at the prospect. I mean it’s been a good show. The little girl’s laugh is back. The thumb’s on. The doves are cooing. It’s very nearly lunchtime.
    But Carrazimo insists. It’s the climax of his act.
    The kids still aren’t entirely convinced. ‘And here’s the thing,’ one especially ‘responsible’ (read as: ‘opportunistic’) young ‘un pipes up, ‘if you don’t come back, what’s gonna happen to the rabbit and the doves and all the rest of your stuff?’
    Carrazimo grins. ‘If I don’t come back,’ he says, ‘then you can divide it among you.’
    Two seconds later, Carrazimo disappears under a hail of sand.
    It takes about ten minutes to bury the illusionist completely. Douglas Sinclair MacKenny has played his part–has even taken the precaution of patting