The Peppers and the International Magic Guys. Sian Pattenden

      our days ago Uncle Potty had come to stay with eleven-year-old Pepper twins – Esmé and Monty. It was the summer holidays and while Mr and Mrs Pepper went on a quick trip to an ancient woodland site, Uncle Potty was in charge. The best and most exciting thing about this was that Uncle Potty was a professional conjuror, a member of the International Magic Guys (IMG) club, which happened to be based round the corner from the Peppers’ home in Highwood Road. The next best thing, as far as Monty was concerned, was that Uncle Potty was always practising magic and therefore always in need of an assistant. Monty had been delighted to help. He had fetched and carried for Uncle Potty (so far Monty had cleaned fourteen magic tumblers and one plastic bowl), polished Uncle Potty’s patent leather shoes and glued his magic top hat back together where it had split.

      Uncle Potty was impossibly old and extremely tall. As a consequence, his sleeves reached his elbows and his trouser hems were always by his shins. He found it difficult to navigate those tiny waistcoat pockets with such long fingers and when he started to become anxious – like now – his hair would stick up on end, looking like crazy woollen worms on a roller-coaster ride. Uncle Potty’s eyebrows also seemed to have been knitted – to form one gigantic, fluffy strip. He had a loud voice and a basic theatricality. He could not have been anything other than a magician, although the rest of his family were a roaring success in the dry-cleaning business.

      However, as thrilling as it was having a magician in the house, Esmé had begun to notice that most of Uncle Potty’s tricks seemed to end in disaster. Worryingly,

      Uncle Potty had taken over the kitchen at the Peppers’ home all morning and was now standing by the kitchen table, ready to perform his latest act. Uncle Potty had so far removed the items in his way – Esmé’s homework notebook, a library book about wildlife, the Peppers’ laptop and some sticks that had yet to serve a purpose – and put them on the floor. In their place was a large bowl of water and five different fruits placed in a line – a kiwi, a melon, a medium-sized pineapple, an apple and a tangerine. The fruits were a little squashed and soggy and Uncle Potty had brightly coloured stains all over his shirt.

      “I have discovered the trick of all tricks,” announced Potty, long arms in the air. “It involves making a watch disappear, then to be revealed in a piece of… fruit.”