Edmund Vale has baffled more people than any magician alive, and he has done so almost exclusively from a shed in Shropshire with a dictionary and a tin of biscuits.
How it began
We meet at a table in the corner of a workshop that smells of sawdust and strong tea. The conversation begins with a warning that nothing said is likely to be interesting, a claim that is disproved within about ninety seconds and then again every few minutes for the next three hours.
A clue is a small, polite lie that you are delighted to discover.
The work itself
Asked how they learned the trade, the answer comes without hesitation: by doing it badly in front of somebody who would not let them stop. There is no romance in the telling. It sounds like years of repetition, a few patient teachers and a steadily growing respect for the material.
What comes next
The thing outsiders never understand, they say, is how much of expert work is simply noticing. After thirty years you hear the small change in the sound, you see that a surface looks wrong before you could possibly say why. It cannot be written down, which is exactly why it needs an apprentice.
Does retirement ever appeal? There is a long pause, a small laugh and a look around the room at the unfinished projects stacked along the walls. Certainly, comes the reply, as soon as all of this is done. Neither of us takes the suggestion at all seriously.
