What I Did Last Week

It's a Monday morning and the only sensible thing is to start by apologising for revealing a tad of RD flesh at this stage of the day and week, even a wrist. So I'm sorry, particularly if it's put you off your breakfast.

There it is. I've pontificated long enough, but tat two has been chosen and installed and I'm particularly pleased with it. There's no deep significance to it, no meaning at all. It's not an ancient family symbol or a way of expressing my passion for Lanka or drumming in a language that many wouldn't understand, all of which are things I considered.

It's just a design that I liked, which is probably a good way of choosing. The second choice, the only other viable option was the Chinese character for drum. I spent many minutes looking at it and contemplating, in the end deciding that Chinese characters are a bit too high fashion, that in years to come they'll look as if I had something done that was all the rage at the time. This one also matches tat one, hopefully not so much that I'm doing the bodily art equivalent of wearing jeans with a matching denim jacket.

I went for dinner at the 'rents' place on Friday night and I must admit I was amused and slightly surprised by their reaction. My Mum took a look at it and her instant reaction was a grimace and an "uurgh" as if she was watching one of those emails fellows send round, the ones that are fundamentally vile but you feel compelled to watch again and again.

Then her interest got the better of her and she looked at it in detail and asked questions about it, how it takes to heal, how it felt and so on.

My Dad was just funny. He took one look at it, said "chee" and made a face as if I'd just been found guilty of attempting to assassinate Barack Obama while wearing a T shirt saying that I was doing it on behalf of my family on my Dad's side. Yes, it was a "chee" with a particularly hard ch to it.

Later on over dinner I laughed. They've got a couple of guests staying there, pretty much compulsory for Sri Lankan parents I know. I was showing the tattoo to the guests, not by choice but because my Mum had done the Lankan mother thing of telling them about it and making me show them.

One half of the two guests said that he'd quite like to get one and casually asked my Dad if he had any.

"No" came the reply.

"I don't believe in them."

"They do exist you know Dad" was my all too clever retort.

"They're not like UFOs or ghosts."

He scowled at me, in that way that I try to scowl at the girls but can never quite manage.

I shut up.

The parents bit was easy.

I've yet to tell the girls and A quite seriously told me that she might not talk to me ever again if I was to get a second one done.

We'll see on Wednesday.

Have a splendid week all.