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Memoir Blast - Ladybird Tattoo 1999 ( I think)

 


The Ladybird Tattoo

I got the ladybird tattoo because a school mum — a passing acquaintance who clicked into a friendship — wanted a tattoo and was afraid. That’s the truth of it.

She said if I went with her, she’d get me a tattoo. There was probably way more to it — she had a close friend who’d chickened out deposit paid (honesty I cant remember) — so she needed someone steady to go with her. She paid the £10 or £15 more, and that was enough for my ND brain to go, fine, let’s do it then.

She’d numbed herself with nurses’ cream to get an Irish flag on her side. 

She wanted to watch how a tattoo worked, so she watched me get mine first. I just picked a ladybird — the smallest thing there. No thought about placement. No thought about meaning. Out of the blue. Classic me, and of course I loved it! always glad of my gut feeling. But at the time it was Like choosing tea or coffee? (A tattoo is for life)— a dopamine hit. I know that now.

By the time it was her turn again, halfway through, the numbing cream had worn off. She was in agony. I think she actually stopped and didn’t get the bottom colour of the flag finished.

Her surname just came back to me — funny how memory works. Irish, lovely, adored Molly. Bought her Milky Way Stars constantly. Gave us lifts everywhere in that big blue 4x4 — the original source of my love for 4x4s.

She once got stuck on my driveway in the stones. We had to get the car into proper 4x4 mode to get it out, but it just kept spinning. A funny moment in a time that wasn’t funny at all.

She was a friendship I would have held tight, but I had to let go because of her personal circumstance, always in my thoughts the tattoo I see daily, a constant reminder of her.



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