I’m always excited when I get a postcard from Matt. The last one was from Timbuktu. Matt and his better half took their baby inter railing and went to the oldest magic shop in the Germany.

I’ve never visited myself but looking it up online it looks pretty cool. And it’s definitely on the bucket list. The intro video half way down the homepage is great! Watch it. Looks like there’s a lively group in Berlin.

When the postcard popped through the letter box I was immediately curious, since I’ve been helping M (Mal Norton) rebuild his magic shop website, Top Secret Magic. Which happens to be a pretty old magic shop here in Plymouth.

As I write this that video reminded me that magic really relies on community. I’ve not been very good at staying in touch with people but am reminded I should be better. I see Mal when I work in town but rarely see other folk. I work from home and spend most of my time talking to the birds in the woods at lunchtime.

Mal is pretty good when it comes to tech but he’s not a tech nerd. He’s had a site hosted on a free server with a free domain name www.topsecretmagic.co.uk for over twenty years! When I found that out I couldn’t believe it.

I discovered he didnt’ have a security certificate which was the providers way of politely saying it’s time for you freeloaders to jump ship. Which isn’t easy he’s been building his site by hand since it started and website tech has moved on. And with that probably most of his new visitors.

Mal is a pillar of the local magic scene. He’s always had a shop. He’s always generous and he has a welcoming charm for those who are interested in his self named ‘The Smallest Magic Shop in the World’. I’ve helped Mal before but he really needed help on this one. A friend told me he was aksing people on facebook about how he could rebuild. I’m not on facebook so when I heard I just said I’d do it. He’s helped soo many people out over the years.

His challenge was hey can you rebuild my site but I can’t afford an encommerce platform or hosting. Yea sure Mal this isn’t 1990 but we’ll do our best. Fortunately there are ways ot host a site for very little cost if you’re a web developer. And with a little rejigging and finally Mal owning his domain name his site is live.

Hopefully we can keep that little part of Plymouths magic scene going a bit longer. Up to now Top Secret Magic is Plymouths oldest running magic shop. Go suppport the old school players in the modern world.

It might mean you can claim you’ve been to the oldest magic shop in the South West.

Written by Kristien Harris