I had a new anxiety dream the other night. For a few years, inexplicably, my anxiety dreams have been about Ray Davies of the Kinks (you wouldn’t believe the stress of finding him the perfect taupe polo neck before he goes on TV). The other week, though, I had a new one. I imagined a tattoo was sliding down my arm, from my shoulder to my hand, until slipping off completely and leaving a muddy, inky stain on the sheets.
I had my first tattoo last October, aged 52: a large, full-colour rendering of a bird – a red kite – on my upper left arm. For years I had been one of those tutting inkphobes who didn’t understand why anyone would mutilate themselves. I would have agreed with a recent article in the Times by Melanie Phillips (paywall) in which she described tattoos as “a kind of desecration, the corruption of something that is pure, precious and the very quintessence of integrity”. Maybe not in those words, perhaps – I’d have just called them ugly – but the thought would have been the same.
