Let me show you my etchings.

Graham Short, 63, copperplate hand engraver, whose clients include the Queen of England.

By 5.30am I'm always awake.  I shower quickly and eat my porridge looking out of the window.  I live in Bourneville Village, which was built for Cadbury's employees - it truly is a little oasis in Birmingham.  I drive to the local pool eight miles away where I swim 3,000 metres, fast, every morning.  There's me, a couple of triathletes, and my friend Mick.  I used to swim three times a day, 75,000 metres a week, and I was breaking records.  I reckon I was the fittest man in the world for my age. I'm a bit of an obsessive and I dare say it cost me my first marriage.  It's all or nothing with me.  Most of my work comes from London.  The House of Commons prints 21m sheets of headed paper a year and fortunately for me the steel dies of the portcullis insignia wear out.  I do another every two months.  I made a lot of money in the 1980s.  I made hand-engraved letterhead for all the big banks.  I had a big house and sent my children to private schools.  That was important for a boy who left school at 14 with one O-level and a girl's bike.  I felt I'd arrived.

I still do business cards and letters for no end of celebrities.

I've just don't Andrew Lloyd Webber's and Richard Branson's stationary.  I do Prince Charles's stationery and all the royal palaces'.  The Queen's printer sends me the artwork, but the royal household doesn't know it's me who makes the engravings.  No one does. I'd have loved a By Royal Appointment warrant - I've been doing it for 40 years - but it's an anonymous life.

I used to work in Birmingham's Jewellery quarter, but I can work anywhere. I've taken over a room in my mother's house now.  I just need my microscope, a lamp and a box of small tools.  I start by coating my steel die or copperplate with an acid-resist solution called Janes' Etching Ground, then I begin scratching out the design with a sharp needle.  I pour acid into the strokes to soften the surface, moving away any sediment with a pigeon's feather, then use my tools to give them depth.  The deeper the cut, the higher the final emboss.  You can't beat the feeling of running your finger over ink on smooth paper.

Don't ask me why I chose to engrave the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin.  It really did take over my life, and I'm not even religious.

I just knew that engraving 278 letters on a two-millimetre surface was something no one else could do and I was after that sense of achievement.  I experimented with lots of miniature engraving tools, and the best were very fine needles made at the turn of the 19th century.  I bought 300, 20 years ago, and still have 30 left.  I flattened the points then re-sharpened them with an Arkansas whetstone.  Then they had to be tempered to the right strength.  Small birthday candles work best - once the needle's glowing it's quenched in an egg cup of oil but too much heat and the steel's too soft to work with.  I've spend whole days heating and re-heating a needle.

I've worked on the pin under a microscope, at night, my arm strapped to my side with a leather luggage strap, so only my fingertips could move.  Once I looked up to see a mouse staring straight at me.

The pattering of its feet on the floor can cause enough vibration to make the needle slip across the pinhead.  I'm incredibly fit, but even my own pulse affected the steadiness of my hand.  In the end I wore a stethoscope and, holding my breath, aimed for one stroke at a time, between heart beats.

I always try to swim again at lunchtime.  My mother used to cook a full roast for me every single day until she died a few months ago aged 101.  I often didn't want it, which annoyed her.  I tend to eat chocolate biscuits at morning, which is terrible. I know; it's my only weakness.

On average, a design will take a day and a half and I'll work Saturdays and Sundays if I've got the work.  If I haven't, I'll have the weekend off, but I'm not happy.

I can't take time off and I never could.  I worked so hard when my children were younger, I never saw them grow up.  Everything is black and white with me, there's no grey tone.  I look at people swanning round, having coffee, and I think:  "Why aren't they working?".

I have to stop at 5pm to get the finished steel dies and copperplates to the post office before it closes.

Then it's an 18-mile drive to Halesowen to coach at a junior swimming club.  I might have something to eat before I go, or more biscuits in the car.  My second wife, Luba, is very tolerant, but I think her patience is wearing thin.

I have a glass of wine in front of the News at 10 and wake up a couple of hours later. If I've something special on, I'll work late into the night. I've always felt that my work for the royal family deserves its own ambience and I might head back to my workshop at 10pm with a bottle of champagne, a lot of crusty bread and a chunk of Roquefort.  I love the work, because I'm doing something special with my own hands. I'm usually filthy dirty and I've ruined all my clothes with the acid, but knowing the Queen of England signs her name on paper bearing my engraving means everything to me.

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