The Final Word: Getting needled!

By Paul Moore

Innocence can manifest itself in the oddest of ways. Just last week I was told a story of a man who was minding his own business, having a coffee in a coffee shop in Belfast.

He was, as many now are, liberally covered in tattoos.

There was a mother and a young female child opposite and he was aware that they were paying him perhaps a little too much attention. Finally he heard the mother tell the child to go and ask him, and she somewhat sheepishly approached him.

Eventually she asked, “Mister, do you put all those tattoos on in the morning yourself or does your mammy help you with them?’

Sadly I know not his response, but hope upon hope he told her his mammy helps him every morning.

I suspect there are many who wish she was right and the skin markings could simply be taken off when one felt like it and replaced anywhere on the body one desired.

The problem with tattoos is that what seems like a good idea today may not seem quite so clever in a few years’ time, especially if the said tattoo involves relationships of some kind.

The only answer is to have unwanted markings surgically removed, generally by laser, a process I am assured which is more painful than getting them done in the first place and a good bit more expensive.

Not that any of this puts people off. By a coincidence a couple of days after I heard the story of the little girl the Observer newspaper ran a major article examining the tattoo trade and showing evidence that it has become a very middle class lifestyle choice.

Tattoo artists are now treated like rock stars in the skin marking community and many are considered artists in their own right.

Those being tattooed seem to fall into two groups: Those who want their entire body used as a canvas with virtually no flesh left unmarked – footballers and sports stars, male or female, seem to favour this – and those who want a small marking, often hidden on their body, which means something to them.

The second group may also be averse to being poked by needles for hours at a time.

For the sake of transparency I will confess I fall into the latter group having two small tattoos which few will ever see and which are in fact so small that if they did see them they might well fail to register with them.

I had the first done in Japan and did not realise that firstly, it is illegal to have tattoos in Japan and will, for example, bar you for public spaces such as swimming pools. Secondly, I did not realise that the colleague taking me for the tattoo had made the appointment with a traditional artist who did the work using sharpened bamboo shoots, a process which takes infinitely longer and is distinctly more painful than the modern needles. As a fully paid-up needle coward I have no words to tell you how traumatising this was although it at least allows me to boast now.

The strange thing is that when I see tattoos, the modern black ones, that is never colour, I find myself wishing I could have another bit of engraving done. When this yearning occurs I remind myself, however, that I am no longer young and the sight of a tattoo becoming wrinkled and saggy may not be the look I want to portray at this stage in my life. But if I change my mind there is one thing you can be sure of: It is being done in clinical conditions with sterilised needles.