TIPPING POINTS

Okay. We’ve been on holiday. Yes, the UK, where the grass is brown and the sun burns relentlessly through the lurid blue sky. I can’t even remember what rain feels like.

Do you reckon there will come a point when more people have tattoos than don’t? I’m asking because this week I wondered whether we might be there already. I’ve seen suns on elbows, tigers on legs, flowers on backs and Sanskrit on shoulders. I’ve seen dates and names and sweet phrases like ‘regret nothing’ and ‘life is sweet’ - which are really interesting things to have indelible but nevertheless, present. I’ve seen lions and eagles and places and faces, even Martin Luther King Junior, staring back at me.

I’ve not been staring. Let’s make that clear. But glancing, certainly. And whether or not Cotswold Wildlife Park, or the grounds of Blenheim Palace, or Bourton on the Water are good samples of the wider population I don’t know. But if they are, then there are a lot of tattoos out there.

A friend of mine asked me what I thought of tattoos recently. I’m always nervous about that question. All I can say is that they’re not for me, and I don’t find them attractive. But it’s okay if you do. I said I didn’t like them because they so often make a person look like they’ve been scribbled on, much like a wall in a house with unruly toddlers who’ve had unprecedented access to permanent markers. Not always! There is some fine art out there, real craftsmanship! But for me, some, perhaps most, tattoos just don’t appeal. And with something so personal and so permanent, you have to be really careful.

So are we, I wonder, at tattoo tipping point? We’re a long way from when it was just sailors, builders and prisoners. If it is true that most adults in these boiling British Isles have now had at least one inking, then I’m in the minority.

It really has been baking hot. We’ve had weeks of it. I think the weather’s about to change, but what we could really do with is a good old downpour - a humdinger storm with monsoon rains and sweeping cool breezes over the fresh earth. That’s the tipping point we need.