When Paul Edwards left school at 15, he headed to the careers office in Salford, Greater Manchester, to speak to the man behind the glass hatch. The careers officer riffled through his little box of cards, and pulled out two. One card advertised a vacancy for a violin-maker’s apprentice; the other for a precision grinder, which paid twice as much. Edwards’ mother told him there was no choice. He became a precision grinder.
He must have thought about this fork in the road many times since, because two years ago, at 62, he built a guitar. “And the first thing I thought was: Why didn’t I do this when I left school?”
