Suffering from blackouts?

Boudicca

The ancient Celts moved across western Europe reaching the

British Isles around 400 BC.  The Iceni were the tribe who settled in

my region of East Anglia; their queen Boudicca being one of their

best known warrior leaders.  Body art was an integral part of their

culture and permanent body painting was carried out with the locally

grown woad leaving a blue design on the skin.

Tattoo's, certainly when I was a child growing up in London in the

1950's, were the trappings of criminals and sailors and not something

that a nice little girl should concern herself with.  But, even so, they

fascinated me - must be the woad in my blood.

I wonder if he'd ever ventured "down under"?

You could always tell where a sailor had been by the inks on his body

or the rum on his breath - a turtle for crossing the equator, an anchor for

crossing the Atlantic, a dragon for crossing the China Sea and a black

eye for crossing a shipmate (back to the rum again)!

Zoom in, it's under the bracelet.

What they never told me was that during the late Victorian/Edwardian

period the "blue art" had an aristocratic moment when even the American

Jennie Churchill (Sir Winston's mother) bore a snake on her wrist usually

discreetly covered in public with a diamond bracelet.

When it was finished she said "The worst is all behind me now!"

One of my favourite chroniclers, good old William of Malmesbury,

when describing the Brits on the eve of the Battle of Hastings (1066)

said: "The English at that time wore short garments reaching to mid-

knee, they had their hair cropped, their beards shaven, their arms laden

with gold bracelets, their skin adorned with tattooed designs.  They

were accustomed to eat till they became surfeited and to drink

till they were sick."

Friends said you could read her like a book.

No change there then.  Scroll forward a milennia and the picture is much

the same today in any of our big towns and cities on a Saturday night

when the clubs turn out.

A little black number.

But just when it seemed that the tattooist's art had reached it's natural

limits with virtually every inch of flesh fully "illustrated" along comes

BLACKOUT!  Goodbye dolphins, roses and hearts - hello arms, legs

and even torso's inked solid black.

Gives "black leg" a whole new meaning.

I have a theory that this style might have got it's name not from the

blanket nature of the genre but from the reaction of the recipient's

mother upon first viewing of her offspring's latest exploits.  I have

only to cast my mind back to when my own mother viewed my first

piercing to support this hypothesis!

My mother always one to over react.