When I started turning yellow I was confined to bedrest in a darkened room for six weeks. My parents were told this was the best response to the bug that had invaded my nine year old body. (Probably a pretty ill-informed treatment because that happened a long time ago.) What they didn’t know was I was about to be stricken by another, more persistent bug.

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To keep me occupied I was given a magic set. And that was what infected me. I was totally fascinated by the secrets it revealed and my dreadful ‘yellow jaundice’ bug was quickly replaced by an incurable magic bug!

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In fact, just a year later I was standing alone on the stage of a crowded Town Hall, in front of around 500 local villagers with their children, performing my first public magic show. 

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The climax came when I smashed the school principal’s watch into hundreds of fragments of glass and metal, before confidently restoring it to its former glory. Except that when I shook it out of the bag, those hundreds of pieces came happily tinkling out onto the metal tray. The silence was palpable and I can still see the look of total horror on my mother’s face.

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Fortunately I realised I had used the wrong magic words and to tumultuous applause I quickly transformed the pieces back into the watch they were meant to be. I’m pretty sure that was the moment when my magic bug embedded itself and became part of my DNA. 

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Life moved on – military conscription, university, law practice, marriage and family. But all the time with magic very much my constant diversion and companion.

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