Tattoo No. 4.

Woke up this morning glued to my bed by the tattoo I’ve now got along the back of my rib cage, it’s the outline of a puzzle piece, based on the Biffy Clyro album cover and Simon Neil’s tattoo. It’s my forth tattoo and getting inked is never a decision I take to lightly. I give myself at least a year on an idea before I would ever get it adorned. My reasons for this are pretty obvious, I don’t want to be stuck with a passing fancy for the rest of my days.

My tattoos are very personal to me. The first one I got was the lyrics to Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven across the right hand side of my chest – To be a rock and not to roll. To me it symbolises keeping up your own reasoning, finding your own path, it’s something that I have always felt, that I couldn’t just fit in, that I wanted to do things on my own terms and I was twenty before I got that one done. I remember the tattooist (at Woody’s, High Wycombe) advising me against getting it on my chest because it would hurt but it’s the least painful one I’ve had.

The second tattoo I got was a bit of a rebel move. My mum decided that she wanted to move out, and I’ve since come to terms with that but I wanted some way of depicting the fact that it was going to just be me, my dad and my brothers so got The Cure lyric ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ on a scroll over a heart. I think of it as being a note for us to stick together, and I am very lucky that we are all in it together.

In the last year I lost both grandparents on my mothers side and a very close friend and I wanted to get a tattoo that made me feel that there was a reason for it. I have ‘My body is a cage’ tattooed on my right arm for that. All three of them died because their bodies were plagued by something and I like the idea that they are free of that now, that being in this life was holding them back, and that they are better and happier wherever they are now.

The most recent one to me symbolises the way I think about myself, that I am always looking for that last piece, and improving myself to try and get it, to be complete, to achieve everything I ever dreamed of. Maybe when i get there I’ll mark that as well.