How I found out that DIY tattoos are a bad idea.

Last Updated on February 18, 2023

I have long admired the art involved in getting a full sleeve tattoo but have no tattoos myself. I wanted to know if I could get used to an inked arm so I got a marker pen and drew myself a hearty Viking and a few other doodles and enjoyed the novelty, to be honest the novelty enjoyment might have been a little bit wine-fuelled because by the end of the evening every guest at our dinner party had added their uniqueness to the collective art piece that was my arm.

It was all a proper chuckle until the next morning when I awoke to find a perfect imprint of my Viking (and his variously obscenely drawn associates) nicely printed across my naked sleeping beauty (a.k.a the wife).  I was in a quandary; should I gently wake her and in a softly spoken voice explain that she now had a Viking helmet on her left nipple, or should I leave home and start a new life in the style of the Littlest Hobo.

I crept downstairs to knock up breakfast in bed (music may soothe the savage beast, but a bacon buttie made more sense that tootling a lute to break the news), and as it turned out I didn’t have to worry too much about my wife’s reaction upon waking up covered in my ink, because she was much more animated by the fact that my experimental arm art had vacated my flesh and taken up residence on our only set of bed sheets.

The moral of the story?  Vikings make damn cool tattoos.