Sometimes, there is magic.

In my experience it’s very rarely accompanied by flashes, bangs, glitter, fireworks, gasps, or small white animals.

Instead, it’s usually a tingling – a circle of pins and needles at the top of my head.

That’s how I know when magic is near me.

I’ve felt it many times in my life. When I’ve written the perfect sentence. When I’ve held a baby. When I’ve laughed myself silly over something. When I’ve done something, or seen something, or felt something AMAZING. When I’ve witnessed incredible coincidence. When disparate parts have suddenly fallen together perfectly.

That’s magic.

A cold knowing.

A bubble of happy, at the moment of burst.

Hairs raised on your arms, on the inside and the outside.

Magic, for me, has become rarer as I’ve gotten older.

The problem (and weirdly, the gift) of experience is the perspective it gives you on small moments as part of a wider picture – so whatever you’re experiencing isn’t so all-consuming. And while the pain isn’t as world-endingly acute as when you’re a child, for instance, the magic isn’t quite as bright either. Not when put into your now bigger context.

But every now and again, I still find a small pocket of magic.

Usually when I’m not looking.

And I found one the other day on Channel 4.

Now. I don’t watch that much telly, partly because I don’t have the time, and partly because my telly watching is done with small children in tow, and as they’ve become bigger it’s actually gotten worse. Although they could theoretically now watch things I actually want to watch, they don’t want to, and now they’re up later in the evening so they’re eating into my solo TV time. (In fact we’re fast approaching the moment when the Big Small’s bedtime will be after mine).

So anyway, all in all I managed to miss the now very old documentary about that time they dug King Richard III up from a car park in Leicester.

I remember seeing it on the news.

What I don’t remember is quite how mad the whole thing was…

So here’s the basics, in case this passed you by, too, or you’ve forgotten because it was so long ago.

Some brilliantly bonkers woman with a weird fan-crush on Richard III did a bunch of research on where his body ended up, and managed to persuade people at the University of Leicester to dig up a social services car park, which she believed was the site of an old friary.

She is joined in this random quest at various points by various academics who clearly think she’s as mad as a hatter, the most comically camp local historian ever to have unwittingly impersonated John Inman, Simon Farnaby of Horrible Histories and Ghosts fame, and, importantly, SIMON FARNABY’S HAIR – which is so moppily huge, out of control and genuinely charismatic it deserved it’s own billing on the credits.

So this unlikely crew rock up to this car park, pick a spot which is randomly emblazoned with the letter R (for Richard or possibly Reserved, we don’t know) and start digging. They literally find his skeleton in the first trench they dig, within the first ten minutes of the documentary.

He’s even got clear scoliosis (the curvature of the spine for which he’s famous) – which greatly upsets the bonkers lady as she’s convinced herself (and her obsessive online fan club) that this was all a propaganda myth perpetrated by the Tudors stealing his throne. There are actual tears!

The scene where Bonkers Lady and Camp Historian reverently remove the cardboard-boxed remains from the grave, draped in a flag of Richard III’s colours – and then shove it in the footwell of a crappy car – all under the withering gaze of the academics, is one to behold, and indeed to treasure.

The next hour and a half is devoted to them gradually unearthing more and more evidence that against all likelihood, sense and expectation this IS in fact the real Richard, via actual historical evidence and even the DNA of his 17th generation cabinet-maker grandson. (!!!)

And the very best bit is watching all of these highly-educated professors slowly having to admit this random crazy woman, all her conspiracy theories and the tingle she got in the car park – WERE ACTUALLY RIGHT ALL ALONG.

It is pure gold.

And surely, SURELY, a little bit of magic.

Certainly, I got a bit of a tingle. (Though that could have been the Sauvignon Blanc).

So if magic is a commodity you are running low on, if you love a good coincidence, and/or celebrating Britain’s eccentrics, if you need to believe the world is bigger and better and more organised than it currently looks, this is well worth your time.

Even if you’re a few years behind everyone else on it.

Even if you don’t believe in magic anymore.

The really important bit, I find, is just to keep on looking for it.

In all the littlest, oldest, and almost forgotten places.

xxx