Tattoos and the follies of youth

WHEN I was about 19 or 20 I bought some jeans with embroidery on the back pockets

It seemed a good choice at the time but the following day I began to have misgivings and I don’t know that I ever wore them. What a waste of a fiver.

The reason I impart this seemingly useless piece of information is that it’s one thing to decide you’ve made the wrong decision with an article of clothing because you might even be able to sell it on.

If it’s the wrong hairstyle well, as my mate’s grandad used to say, there’s only a fortnight between a good one and a bad one.

But what about a tattoo? Wake up the following morning and decide you’ve made a terrible mistake and there’s nothing you can do.

Or what if you’re happy with it when you’re 20, but change your mind by the time you’re 30? Are we going to have legions of wrinkly grannies with things etched on to the small of the back?

Or what if, in the folly of youth, you’ve decided to have a tear tattooed on your cheek, or a dotted line and “cut here” on your throat? Will it still seem a good idea at 50?

I’ll make two points here. One is my mate Gary, who had a tattoo on his arm saying Carole, except that the girl he married was called Linda. Still, he was daft as a brush.

The second goes back to when I worked at Park Cake in the 1970s.

A lot of the lads there had tattoos and a young, not particularly bright boy decided to follow their example. He paid £10 — probably something like £40 now — for a black panther. Trouble is, it looked like a drowned rat.

And then there was a woman I saw in Ashton the other day. She had a tattooed instep.

It looked like someone had poured ink on her foot and had it been a birthmark I’m sure she’d have been right in for laser surgery.

If you’re big and muscular, I can understand a tattoo, say on a bulging bicep. But I’m thinking of an anchor or a regimental badge. Not some strange Celtic weave.

As you might have worked out, I don’t have any tattoos. David Beckham has put me off with his winged angels on his back and names on his forearms. And I have to be honest, I don’t know how a footballer can pose as an underwear model, let alone shove a tennis ball down the front of his grundies.

It would never have happened with Nobby Stiles or John Fitzpatrick.