"Haven't you got a mid-life crisis to be getting on with?"

Before

There wasn't a post here yesterday. Yeah, there wasn't one on Saturday either, my first unannounced absence since like July, but then I was best man at another wedding (like buses, you go eighteen years and then two come along at once). Yesterday though, I got my tattoo.


When I was 17, I tattooed myself, the time-honoured ink-and-pin method, on the hand, and I did it really badly, and ended up (and you can see them on the picture above if you look closely) seven dots on my hand. They were my tattoo for a very long time. Part of me.

I had decided to get my hand tattooes properly when I turned 50. But a few weeks ago, someone I knew and liked a lot passed away really suddenly and I I began to think about my own mortality. How I could die tomorrow. I mean, I am (if my family history is anything to go by) way past halfway through my life. So I just decided to get it done anyway. My kids recognised it as "Dad's Chariot sign" and it's not like it hasn't been used here a lot; it's a Trinitarian model, the specific design of which has personal significance for me. 24 hours later, still a little raw, it looks like this:  

After