tattoos 5 March 2008
I met a lad in Galway who had a lot of tattoos, and many of them could be deemed body art. For instance, his left arm is covered in wondrous Japanese-inspired designs and he has a most impressive Jesus on his right shoulder. I guess the one myself and the lassies I was with found most interesting was the tattoo of his ex girlfriend’s handprint on his buttock. We likened it to the glass slipper in Cinderella and he was good enough to let us try our handsizes against it. Mine didn’t quite fit, which is just as well as I am a married laydee (even if the husband is sometimes suspected to be a figment of my overburdened imagination). I would love a tattoo and, at my London sister-in-law’s prompting, feel it should be 3 ducks flying up my bottom, not unlike the Coronation Street type found on walls there. I had intended to do it for my 40th but the husband was agin it, but now I’m thinking my 50th would be just the right time, though that’s a few years off yet. And when people assure me that I will regret it when I am much older I have to demur – au contraire, I say, I will be delighted when I am 80 to haul up the loose skin on my ass and say to shocked youngsters ‘see what I did when I was 50’. It’s true that people should be careful with the old tatts, though. For instance, most men I know on reaching 40 want a tattoo and a motorbike and it’s like a right’s of passage, middle-aged cry for help. My brother-in-law, on Richard’s side, wanted all that but had to settle for a Mercedes soft-top sportscar. And the horror there? Well, he had to get the 4-seater, in case he ever had to pick his kids up from school in it – not exactly the ‘affair car’ then.
