The Magican

[otter]

The Magician

Before the advent of Carbon Fibre many game fishing tackle shops were quite different than those of to-day.  The banter was the same, the stories and the shameless exaggerations was the same but the clientele was mostly drawn from certain levels of society.

This story is from a long established fishing shop, the better type of shop you know, where the better class angler ensured the mahogany counters had a permanent gleam.  The world of Hardy Rods and glittering display cases, all geared to the desires and wallets of gentleman anglers.

One regular, not so well pursed angler visited such a shop each week to purchase a single fly. He was renowned for his catching abilities, and came to be christened   'The Magician' by one of the shops owners. As word of his ability to catch trout in even the most difficult of conditions spread, his reputation  grew in stature and mystique till the legend became much greater than the man. 

Each time that he visited, the box containing his preferred and only fly was laid ceremoniously on the counter. He would deftly sort through the flies until a half dozen or so were laid in a small pile, and more often than not, he had a small audience as he did so. Each from the pile was examined in great detail, held to the light.  Often he would walk to the front door so he could better examine it in daylight. All the while, his rituals would be observed by the other customers, speaking quietly amongst themselves whilst the Magician held centre stage.

Having made his selection he would light a cigarette, taking a strong pull, he then blew on the tip till it glowed strongly. Then he proceeded to singe the fly.  Satisfied with his work he would pull a coin from his sparse purse and pay for the fly and bid all a good day.  Many an angler sought his council, Doctors, Judges, Barristers and even the Bishop, but he remained elusive and mysterious.

On leaving the shop the assembled audience would rush to the counter and try and grab the remaining flies he had left in a small pile, assuming they were nearly as good as the one he had just picked. It is said that many offered what for him would have been serious money for the method of burning the fly but he always replied that he had made a pact with the devil and could not reveal its secret.

Many years later after the Magician had departed this world, the shop owner revealed the reason why  he called him the Magician. He had come to notice, that his stocks of that particular fly never balanced. Eventually he realised that the old codger was somehow pocketing quite a few each time he went through his little fly picking ceremony. For many years he watched and watched but could never quite see how he did it, and even if he had he would have said nought for the sales of that fly were incredible. It was also rumoured that nearly every trout angler in the locality took up smoking.

If you fish a certain river on a moonlit night and get a waft of cigarette smoke on the gentle breeze, and hear trout fighting an unseen rod,  go home for you will catch little,  whilst the Magician and his friend the devil ply their craft......

[Ripple]

This reminded me of the time I worked in a sports shop many years ago, which included fishing gear, never had a character like the Magician tho.

[Buanán]

There's an old fellow in Dornie, marine electrical engineer; retired, who after many years at sea finished off his career in oil and gas electrical commissioning, his speciality and the area of expertise that off-shore electrical contractors were interested in him for was marine power generation systems, of which he had encyclopedic knowledge.

Around 10 or 12 years ago I found myself on a construction job in the mexican sector of the gulf of mexico. The guys heading up the electrical commissioning side, who I shared an office with and once they discovered where I lived, asked me if I knew Farquhar (Fac'ar) The Magician.   

They had some stories regarding his ability to trouble shoot generation issues but more specifically; his ability to start tripped systems that defied all other attempts.

He got the "Magician" nick name from a ritual that he performed at the switch box on restarting, a few magic words and lifting and lowering both arms up and down uttering said magic words as, if in praise of some deity, he quickly flicked the various switches with the tips of his out stretched fingers, all the while the system sprang to life, lights changing from red amber and finally to green. "How do you do that Farquhar"? they would ask, "it's magic boys, just highland magic", hence he became known in commissioning circles as The Magician. Everybody he worked with was simply left bamboozled as to the source of this seemingly magical ability.

10 years on Farquhar has truly retired but still fields weekly calls from desperate companies looking for a little of that old magic, still much in demand on various commissioning jobs around the world.

Farquhar was quite a canny saver in his time and has a healthy pension that he likes to squander in the local pub or in search of craic locally. He's not short of a bob or two and hanging around the village or traveling with the shinty team etc, is exactly what he saved for and how he planned to spend his retirement after spending most of his life away.

So it was in the pub a few years back that I mentioned his nom deplume, Farquhar just laughed and laughed, to the extent I was starting to get a little worried. He told me, after he'd recovered, that when he was made redundant from the merchant navy he still needed to make a certain number of payments to realize his retirement. So he started looking around.

Electrical commissioning, I think it would be safe to say, Farquhar found to be a little below himself initially and more than a little step down, swapping a senior officers uniform and standing for a boiler suit and a clock number. Farquhar reckoned he wouldn't have lasted past his first job due to his age and the rather rudimentary nature of the work he was being asked to perform, if it hadn't been for a chance meeting in a switch room with a perplexed senior commissioning engineer and worried section manager, all 20 years younger than himself. They asked Farquhar if he knew anything about these systems to which Farquhar told them that he'd worked with these systems all his life and maybe able to help out.

He told me that he could see from the control panel what the issue was, "you see Willie, these guys were industrial electricians, not engineers", "They flick this switch and that, hoping for the best". "If I'd shown them what was up I'd have been back out in the plant like a shot and unemployed once we got everything accepted by the client".

So Farquhar used a little diversionary tactic and slight of hand that had been an old joke in his African days, that he and his pals had used to convince 3rd world crewmen of the magic of electricity. "The stupid buggers watch the show, not your hands, it's just a case of resetting the switches with consecutive passes of the hands and starting her up".

Fair to say Farquhar milked that for a few years, from boiler suit and clock number, to senior commissioning team member in the flick of a switch. That; Farquhar tells me, was the real magic and in that regard he really proved to be every bit the Magician, magic'ing a plumb job and realizing his full pension out of the most unlikely circumstances. Magic, highland magic, at it's best  :lol:     

[otter]

 

[Buanán]

Glad you liked that Otter  :lol:

[otter]

A friend of mine was in the Ventilation engineering business. A company he had looked after for years installed a new system which eventually failed. Production shut down - a costly business. After several days he was given a call and duly arrived onsite. He reckoned there were technicans in suits, in white jackets, brown jackets, god knows what other colours - every where he looked there were technicans beavering away over oscilliscopes and in his words, periscopes, stethescopes every bloody scope ever invented.
Several times they brought up the system and it ran for a few minutes until the electricty tripped and they scratched their university degrees.

He pulled the maintenance guy to one side and asked him to remind him the location of the electric panels, told him to meet him there at lunchtime. He went out to his car, smoked a few cigars and waited for the suits to go for lunch.

In he went, took his expensive tools out, a phase tester, got the maintenace guy to bring up the system, waited for it to trip, replaced the faulty trip switch, switched everything back on.

When the suits came back from lunch he was standing under a vent , cigar lit , watching the fumes spiral up to one of the vents.