This week I had a front row seat on magic.

As I write this, I have a great ball of emotion sitting in my throat.

I want to cry.

Perhaps 60-year-old women are more likely to cry at the drop of a ball. I reckon that’s a good thing.

This week we had clown doctors at StGiles.

Actually, a clown doctor in training, and two accredited clown doctors. It was their first time at StGiles.

I could ask you to use your imaginations, and I’m sure it wouldn’t take you too long … perhaps the time it takes for a invisible ball to drop from an imaginary cloud … to imagine the magic that can be worked by clowns at a place like StGiles.

On Thursday afternoon we had a brother and his little sister in for a visit.

The little girl’s distressed screams floated up to my office, and they were relentless.

The screams stopped at about the same time an email landed from Sue at front reception.

“Clown docs are in action in the waiting area,” she said.

Now, some people don’t fancy clowns.

But what was not to fancy about the pair I watched in action with mister four and little miss two?

The clowns had an invisible ball and a paper bag.

Within minutes the clowns had stopped the guttural screams and brother and sister were trying to grab the make-believe ball.

The clowns threw the ball, at first between themselves and then asked the children to throw the ball back.

And they did.

First the little boy, as little boys do, chucked that ball so high that it took an age to plop noisily into the clown’s paper bag.

His sister watched.

The boy threw the ball back and forwards between the clowns, watching and waiting for its noisy, paper-bag landing.

Slowly his sister joined the game.

She could see the ball.

I could see the ball.

The clowns had made a ball out of nothing.

The clowns had made silence from a scream.

In moments the clowns and the children had our team mesmerised.

We could all see the ball.

We could see a ball where there was no ball.

We could hear silence, where 10 minutes earlier there had been screams.

I wanted to cry at the sheer beauty of what the clowns created.

I wanted the beauty and the magic place we were all transported to by the invisible ball to last.

StGiles is an architecturally-inspiring space of soaring ceilings, forests of laminated timber and calming blues, pistachio green and white interspersed with bright primary red, yellow and blue.

The design is purposeful, to inspire and distract, to make people feel worthy. It succeeds.

The clowns enhanced our space with their lightness of movement.  They were perfect. No sound, just that of the age-old wonder of mime.

Like me, you’ve probably watched regular news reports about clown doctors in our hospitals.

I thought clown doctors were medicos who trained as clowns.

As it happens, they’re the opposite.

They’re clowns who pretend to be doctors.

So, there’s another illusion.

On Thursday afternoon those clown doctors took me and other members of our team, with two children, on a short, magical journey to a place where imagination can make anything real and where children stop screaming and start playing, as children and adults can always do, especially when there are clowns to make magic.