I have never been tempted to have a tattoo… I’m not sure I like them on other people, but that is their choice, and I know it is very fashionable for people of every age, but I just don’t like it for me … But if I did, what would I have tattooed on me?
I think back to when I was sixteen, I might have had “Steve McQueen” because I thought he was just wonderful, or I might have had “Granta” because that was my swimming club, or I might have had a line from a poem, “Shot-down angel” springs to mind because that was a poem by Charles Causley which made a great impression on me.
When I was twenty-one, I had gone off Steve McQueen, and now adored Christopher Lee, I had a boyfriend called Mike and loved the South of France, Menton in particular, so would I have had “Menton, Perle de la France” inscribed on me?
In my thirties… and a dark time for me, so maybe I would have had some sad and gloomy tattoos, tear drops maybe…
… but then in my forties, great joy and happiness! So I would then want the names of my husband and children, or maybe a symbolic picture for each, a bee for my husband, a lion for my son, a ladybird for my daughter…
So now, at the age I am, I would be covered in tattoos, a wrinkly Steve McQueen and maybe a slightly less wrinkly Christopher Lee, the word Granta which now has few associations for me, “shot-down angel” which might be quite strange, the name Mike, Menton which I haven’t visited since the 1970’s, and some tear drops… Really? Would I really want all that? No… and won’t people who now have such meaningful names and symbols and words and phrases find in ten or twenty or thirty years time that they are irrelevant and maybe meaningless? Or maybe I’m just out of step with people these days!!
Whatever my thoughts, it really is important to make sure your tattoo artist is literate… there was an article in the paper today about misspelt tattoos. “No regerts” was one and here are some other examples:
- I am a Marshian (I am a Martian)
- A woman used an internet translator to find “I love David” in Hebrew, but instead wrote “Babylon is the world’s leading dictionary and translation software” inked on her back
- Sweet Pee (Sweet Pea)
- Strenght
- Only God will juge me
- What didn’t killed me made me stronger
- Prome Queen
- You only life once
- Jenius (Genius – written on his forehead)
Lois Elsden 