Tesco, the School Gates and the Eternal Question: A Working Magician's Field Guide to Small Talk

There is a moment — roughly four seconds long — that happens every time a new acquaintance learns what I do for a living. Their face does something. Not quite a flinch, not quite delight. Something in between, like a person who has just been told the milk they're drinking might be off.

"A magician?" they say. "Like... proper magic?"

Like improper magic, Brenda. I do card tricks with a deck that's seen things.

The Frozen Aisle Interrogation

Last Tuesday, in Tesco, between the meal deal fridge and a man aggressively comparing two identical loaves of bread, I had one of these conversations for perhaps the four-hundredth time. The woman ahead of me in the queue had spotted the deck of cards in my basket (yes, I buy my own props; no, I don't produce doves from receipts) and asked the question that starts it all:

"What do you do with those?"

"Tricks," I said, which was a mistake, because "tricks" is a gateway word. Within ninety seconds she'd asked me to read her mind, told me her nephew does magic "but he's actually quite good," and demanded — demanded — to know whether I believed in the supernatural.

I said I believed in the supernatural pricing of meal deal meal deals, and she laughed, and for a moment we were just two people in a queue. That's the strange thing about this job: people don't meet a magician. They meet an expectation wearing a lanyard.

The Big Three Questions

After fifteen years of this, I can confirm the questions of the British public fall into three reliable categories:

1. "Can you read my mind?" No. If I could read minds, would I be in a Tesco in February discussing a reduced-to-clear chicken? I'd be in Monaco, wearing a nicer coat. This question is always asked as though the answer might be yes, and always by someone who immediately regrets asking, because what if it is yes and I've already seen what they're thinking about the neighbour?

2. "Do a trick, then." This is the aggressive variant. Usually from a man at a barbecue holding a pint. The correct response is to do a genuinely good trick with his own cards, badly, and let him think he's won. Magic is 40% sleight of hand and 60% knowing when to let someone else feel clever.

3. "How do you do the one with the —" followed by a mime so vague it could describe anything from a card trick to a seizure. I never answer this one. A magician's secrets are sacred. Also I genuinely don't know which one they mean.

The Christening Incident

The most Tesco encounter of all happened last summer. A woman recognised me from a wedding I'd performed at in 2022 — a full two years after the fact — and before I'd even said hello, she said: "You'll do my cousin's christening, won't you? It's in an hour."

An hour. For a christening. In a garden in Walsall where the only table was a plastic folding one with one wobbly leg and a distinct lean.

I went. Of course I went. And it turns out magic at a christening is a beautiful, chaotic thing: half the audience is under four, one of them ate a corner of my card box, and the vicar turned out to be a card sharp of some considerable skill who beat me at my own game in front of everyone. I have never been so thoroughly, so publicly, so righteously destroyed. I've since sent him a Christmas card. We're pen pals of a sort.

The Suspicion Problem

Here's the thing about Britain and magic: we love it and we don't trust it, in roughly equal measure. It's the same national instinct that makes us suspicious of anyone who seems too cheerful at work. A magician claiming to be charming? Unlikely. A magician claiming to be magical? Now hold on a minute.

And honestly, that's the best possible audience to have. Americans applaud. Britons cross-examine. They lean in, arms folded, absolutely certain they'll catch you — and when they don't, that little exhale, that grudging "go on then, how — no, don't tell me," is worth more than any standing ovation. It's applause with the emotion surgically removed, and I'd take it over a theatre of strangers any day.

The Boundary, Such As It Is

The strangest part of the job isn't the tricks. It's that people can't quite decide whether I'm a person or a service. At the school gates, I'm "so-and-so's dad" until approximately 3:15pm, at which point a parent will sidle over and ask if I'd "do something" for their son's birthday. At the dentist, the hygienist asked me to make her appointment fee disappear. I said I'd ask, and she laughed, and then there was the awkward bit where I still had to pay.

The truth is I don't mind any of it. There are worse fates than being the person people approach in queues. It means, on some level, that strangers associate me with a small moment of surprise — with the possibility that an ordinary Tuesday in Tesco might contain a card trick.

So no, madam, I cannot read your mind. But I can tell you've already decided to ask me to your nephew's wedding, and I can tell you the answer is yes, provided there's a table with four working legs.

I'm a professional. Mostly.