I did my balloon lecture on Thursday night, 21st March. It seemed to go down quite well and I took a couple of pictures.
For the first time we used the last 15 minutes of each half as a hands on mini session and made the Firing gun, Rabbit and one balloon flower.
It is interesting to see what goes down well and what is not such a great hit, at magic clubs it seems the simpler things are more of a hit and the hands on I think will be here to stay.
You are always living and learning, well I seem to be.

I have just been sent this nice write up from the event, if anyone would like to join the society or to view who else may be lecturing,
http://www.hcms.org.uk/ They also have a Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/HomeCountiesMagicSociety

Graham Lee 21/3/13
I was amazed when I heard Graham Lee talk about the many international conventions that take place all over the world for balloon modellers, and of the enthusiastic sharing of ideas and techniques that is found at these gatherings of expert practitioners. It opened my eyes to the depth and sophistication of an art form that (I am ashamed to say) I had previously dismissed simply as a way of entertaining children, something that children's magicians might want in their repertoires. How fascinated we all were to hear Graham reveal his passion and enthusiasm for this art at a well-attended and unusually boisterous lecture; during which we all were given balloons and pumps and time to make a few attempts to make first a gun that made a banging sound (the audience having chosen this model from a wide selection), then a rabbit and finally a flower in a pot, each model made from only a single balloon.  Even those who like me had never tried balloon modelling before and who found it hard even to tie the knot to seal the air in the balloon, got somewhere close to finishing the models thanks to Graham's help and patience. Those amongst us who already used balloons got detailed answers to even the most obscure of questions and would only have found the evening very helpful indeed.

Details and subtleties discussed dealt with creating happy and sad faces, the best knots to tie, and tips on applying local friction heating by hand to shape balloons. We had discussions on the benefits and styles of pumps, the type of black pen to use for drawing on balloons, issues of latex allergy (latex is an essential ingredient in modelling balloons) and ways of adding movement to balloon models (e.g. two antennae that wobble on an insect model)

Unlike the approach of most children's entertainers, Graham strives to keep the children quiet during his shows. "If I can hear a pin drop during an act for children then I know they are interested and that I'm doing a good job," he said. By contrast, on the night of Graham's excellent lecture there was never a quiet moment!

During the evening Graham demonstrated how to make a snake, penguin, hippo, bird, bow and arrow, flower hat, rabbit, sword, machine gun, revolver, heart shape, parrot on a perch, teddy bear, ladybird with antennae; and a variety of flowers in different styles and numbers of petals. As Graham pointed out, there are many thousands of models to be found on the balloon forum at www.balloonchat.co.uk, a testimony of how very open and generous is the balloon modelling fraternity.

Graham runs the "Care & Share" balloon days that take place all over the UK where everyone is welcome to attend to improve their balloon modelling skills, more details are on the balloon chat forum.

Graham made reference to his 15-minute magical performance with balloons that he has performed all over the world with and noted an apparent lack of interest in the UK. Readers will be delighted to learn that he will be performing it at the Wessex Magical Association's one-day Magic Convention on Sunday 14th April in Bournemouth. (See http://www.wmagic.co.uk/events.htm)