Woo Hoo! I've finally finished May 2007!
I thought I'd just pop this in here after talking about tattoos in the previous post.
A friend of mine recently asked me to write a guest post on her
blog called Typecast which I've copied here - the original link can be found at the end of this post.
My fascination with skin art started many years before they became so commonplace that every man, woman and dog has one. Nowadays it seems non-tattooed people are rarer than the decorated.
I resisted the urge to get tattooed until I turned thirty. Choosing the perfect indelible design for me took a long time. Finally a particularly nasty boyfriend, whom I had trouble getting rid of, said he’d leave me if I got a tattoo. So I promptly booked my appointment with a local studio in south London and waved the vicious boyfriend off.
My first tattoo was a peacock on my left shoulder blade. I was inordinately proud of it and showed it off as often as I could.
There’s a saying that once you’ve got your first tattoo, you will get more.
Some years later I went to Hong Kong on a business trip. Fuelled by alcohol and a defiant need to shock my strait-laced colleagues, I got my second tattoo. We visited a famous but rather seedy parlour late one night. While my friends looked at the pictures on the walls, I plonked myself down and had my Chinese star sign inked onto my ankle. That one hurt like hell due to it being on a bone. But it was worth it just to see my friends’ faces. Frankly, a pretty poor reason to get a tattoo!
The bug (and ink) was well and truly in my system now.
But life intervened. I had a baby, and my beloved Dad died.
My head was all over the place and some madness prompted me get a tattoo on my other arm. I designed it myself and it included a lot of personal symbolism. Unfortunately, the tattooist was no artist. The outline was just about OK but I should never have asked him to colour it in. It was a disaster and for the first time I regretted my tat. Do not get a tattoo when you are grieving.
Then my husband got a job transfer to Japan. The home of beautiful tattooing! But also a country with the greatest taboos about skin art.
Before we left the UK, I found another tattooist for ink number five - a colourful compass on my right foot meaning “a step in the right direction”. But I wouldn’t recommend enclosing foot tattoos in shoes and socks while packing up your entire house. It got badly infected and I ended up taking strong antibiotics for a while.
Once in Japan I quickly discovered my decorated skin was not appreciated. One man verbally attacked me about the Chinese writing on my ankle. He seemed satisfied that I knew its meaning. I’m also not allowed into public swimming pools or gyms. I can live with that. What does sadden me is that I am not allowed to go into onsen, the natural hot spring pools that Japan is famous for. Tattoos here are a sign of the Yakuza, organised gangs. It makes no difference that I am a Caucasian female; tattoos are “bad”.
He spent a total of about ten hours blacking in my disastrous tattoo and adding decorations to it so I’m no longer ashamed of it. I also broke the golden rule of skin art - “do not have a name tattooed on you”. But as it’s my daughter’s name I will never regret it.
The last piece I had done was another of strong symbolic significance to me, a spiral at the base of my neck, pictured at the beginning of this post.
Am I finished at seven tattoos? Of course not! I’ve just booked another appointment with him to have more work done.
The only difficulty now is deciding where to place it.
My thanks to Nickie at Typecast for allowing me to be her guest.
Here's the link to the original post on her blog.
Here's the link to the original post on her blog.
