An inkling for an inking and my tattoo journey of transformation

I got my first a tattoo last month.

It has taken a while for it to bed in, so I postponed writing about it until an appropriate distance had occurred between my inkling for an inking.?Of course I might have mentioned it once or twice on TEAMS calls at work, to the odd vendor partner, and at the odd event.?Rather than keep it fully under wraps, I have kept it semi transparently hidden as if under the recommended covering for such an endeavour, clingfilm.

Before you ponder the possibility of this being a midlife crisis, I would like to point out that the appointment was a Christmas voucher from my wife. ?The unwrapping of this unexpected understanding on Christmas morn definitely heightened the day, with me sitting post lunch, sans belt, pondering the endless possibilities of potential paintings my physique may soon be adorned with. ?A voucher is an interesting Christmas gift, because of course it has none of the instant gratification of a physical present, you cannot slip it on your feet and feel the smooth cotton or silk if one is lucky of a pair of socks and luxuriate throughout the day.?It is placed back in the envelope, the date of the appointment lodged in one’s brain, as the physical is left untouched its contents play with the mind more than any games console.

My wife had, I think, become bored with my endless protestations that ‘I would look brilliant with a tattoo’ and decided to put and end to my years of nonsense and book me in to Newbury’s finest assortment of artistic artisans, The Freak Show. ??

Now, I have of course had a mid-life crisis with ambitions to own a motor cycle.?This had started a few years previous and had been exacerbated by my brother not only buying various two wheeled machines, but also buying an assortment of leather goods and fighter pilot style helmets.?I had always dreamed of an incredibly powerful racing bike.?The ones you hear from a few miles away, screaming their progress at a tone one could only imagine would emanate from a Samurai Warrior charging the enemy.?I visited my brother and he let me sit, in his leather jacket, astride his latest 600CC machine.?I called my wife and told her I was sitting on this 170 mile an hour beast, but in the excitement had forgotten I was wearing shorts and burnt my leg on the exhaust pipe.?We never got around to turning it on, as we both felt this was a danger too far.?The long drive home from Wrexham, my leg blistered and burning, dampened my enthusiasm somewhat to become the next Barry Sheen.??My friend has just purchased a moped and after another discussion with my wife we both agreed this low powered single seater lawn mower powered perambulator may also be too quick and unprotected for me to venture into ownership.?My brother has since become a motor cycle instructor.?We may talk again soon.

So, I had been booked into The Freak Show in February, and had a whole six weeks to ponder the artistic imprint I was about to make on my body.?What to have.?Where to put it. What size would I be brave enough to choose.?Would I go monochrome or full colour.?A friend once had a Welsh Flag on his arm; full colour but quite small.?Not being the most toned of men it looked like it waved as if in a light breeze.?I deselected flags quite early on.?

My primary concern was that after a few years when my physical garden had become somewhat overgrown and unkempt, I was having myself permanently marked at a time of least physical probity.?I had always put off this experience due to a belief that a chubby Welshman having a tattoo will not mysteriously become a body building behemoth overnight but would just be a chubby Welshman with a tattoo.

This realisation of bodily inadequacy quickly ruled out the various Māori designs that have become so popular with individuals located quite far away from this proud nation.?I imagine their owners don underpants and do the Haka in their bedroom mirror, and good on them, but of course, the thought of trying to impersonate these mighty warriors on my wobbly frame was clearly not on, and in fact I decided an insult to every Māori on our planet.?I apologise to any reading for even thinking that could be a good idea.

As January rolled coldly into February I realised that for every idea I had, there was justifiable reason to rule it out. ?As the date approached for my visit to the parlour I was perilously close to ruling out any design; even downloading a tattoo app for inspiration and finding naught.

Of course, what tried me the most was where to put whatever concept I came up with.?We have all had that moment of spotting a painting and instantly saying ‘that would look good over the fireplace/in the kitchen/on the stairs’ but I had no idea of which painting I wanted or where it would be hung.?I know how Picasso with only one fireplace must have felt.

I soon ruled out my back.?I wasn’t going to wait 50 years for my first body art and put it somewhere I would have to try to twist my head over my shoulder and grab a fold of flesh to see it.?I am not a person to not wear a shirt in public, so a back tattoo would simply be something my poor wife and children would be faced with on a daily basis.?Pointless.

It was easy to rule out chest, I cannot imagine the ignominy of the artist trying to hold onto my male mammary glands as they attempted to create a perfectly proportioned portrait.?Recent weight gain and lack of tennis would of course offer them a rather large blank canvas but unless I went for a Heston inspired blancmange which would indeed have a wonderful wobble, the chances of the outcome being anything other than hysterical were felt to be high.

I then thought of calf muscle.?My wife’s nieces boyfriend started his tattoo tendency on his calf, and quite good they looked, but Jack is to say the least honed, a keen body builder and fitness guru in his spare time, and Jack unlike myself can get away with wearing trainers with casual shorts.?I have never been able to pull off sports shoes for anything other than sport, and even then its touch and go.?My footwear choices are formal shoes or Jesus Sandals.?I have and still continue to try and adorn my feet with sports like footwear during non-work hours but I have never ever felt comfortable in comfy shoes.?And as I discussed this with Jack it dawned upon us both that a calf tattoo and Jesus Sandals is a look the good people of Newbury should not be faced with.?

So the location debate finalised on arms.?My upper arms resemble an undercooked kebab shop enormous skewer, and luckily, as it turns out, the most appropriate place for a tattoo where the skin area does not change if ones weight fluctuates up and down [and I am trying to get my down] was the inside lower forearm.

A eureka moment hit me.?Not only could I see my new artwork at all times, but as I grow older and the circumference of my body displaces more or less water in the bath, my late stage, late age tattoo would stay at the size and shape of its birth.?Bingo, we had a location.

The day of my appointment beckoned, and decked in crew t shirt, shorts, and Jesus Sandals, and covered with a layer of perspiration I headed into town thinking that I would return within hours with a newly minted manscape.

I entered The Freak Show with some hesitation, assuming chunky middle aged men was not their usual customer.?These lovely people, who have taken the art of ink coverage to what could only be described as Olympic standards didn’t flinch.?Becky who had been chosen for my appointment gave me the once over and enquired if a] I had chosen a design and b] where I wanted it.?A conversation with my wife’s niece had given me the idea of morse code and I stupidly opened my mouth and said I quite fancied a Morse Code Matrix style piece that combined the tech past and future in one.

What nobody had told me is you choose you tattoo artist for their style of work.?You don’t tell them the style you want. Nobody told me.

Becky, who had been patient, gave me a look I had been given when I jet washed my own feet, and said, ‘maybe I am not the person to do your work, let’s look for somebody else and rebook you appointment.’

I was, after being terrified for 6 weeks taken aback, wounded, and hurt. I had impugned the artistic integrity of a professional, and Becky was turning me down because of a few foolish and nervously spat out words.?‘No’ ?I exclaimed, ‘I didn’t want morse code.?I want what you do Becky.?Could you show me what you do.’?She was not fully convinced and pointed me to look at some of the most exquisite fantasy come naturalistic drawings I have ever seen.?Lord of the Rings come Fairy’s come wonderfully romantic pieces.?How could I not want Becky.?

I grasped in my pocket.?That morning I had tried to do a word cloud of things I would like and the only thing I could come up with was tree.?Could I have a tree like thing showing trunks and branches, and have my mum in the roots and my wife and daughters in the branches.?I had thought that and written down one word on a piece of paper.?And I showed Becky.?She pointed me in the direction of a tree she had done previously, a beautiful female trunk and then divinely fine branches and leaves, and I said ‘Becky, could you maybe put the initials of these four women and their birth years in there somewhere, and turn that tree into my family of females who mean so much to me.’?She looked at me, our eyes locked and I could see her artistic mind kick into life and she nodded and smiled and said, ‘we could give that a go, I can do it in May.’

I was elated and crest fallen in an instant.

It turns out you can’t simply walk into a parlour and just sign and up and have it done immediately.?And I hadn’t even done that.?It had been booked months ago.?But it is now the law to have a cooling off period, nay sobering up period. This I believe was to discourage chubby Welshmen walking into a tattoo parlour in Blackpool and having a Welsh national flag daubed on a flabby upper arm.?Many years ago, after watching the boat race for the one and only time, and drinking as if a member of the Bullingdon Club but without the trust fund, my wife and a friend from North Wales and I headed to Jongleurs in Hammersmith, I think, and we decided then and there we needed to find a tattoo parlour and mark ourselves as friends forever.?Thankfully as we lurched into the night we realised it was past midnight and ended our search after a rudimentary glance down the high street.?Those were the days this sensible rule did not exist.?I dread to think of the consequences back then, but after 6 weeks of build up to this point, I now faced another 3 months to ponder this decision.?I was all in in February, now I had to get mentally prepared again.?

Well, May this year got here quite quickly, and I was off like a shot to Becky to see what she had created.?It was beautiful.?She asked where I wanted it and I pointed to my forearm and she nodded in approval and we headed through The Freak Shows secret door to get the work done.

I lay down, she donned industrial grade safety gear, cleaned my arm, asked me how I dealt with pain, and then started to sting my arm with an electric bee for 40 minutes.?It never stopped hurting.?But like being sent to hell, I imagine when you have been there for 20 minutes you get used to it.

Thankfully I diverted the pain receptors by chatting away and it turns out Becky, who was adorned head to toe in beautiful work had not only transformed herself once, and pretty much everywhere, but was going over some original work with new work, and transforming herself anew.??She said she got bored with stuff after a few years and also had new techniques to try on herself.?Like a caterpillar to butterfly, Becky was continually re-thinking herself and transferring those thoughts into new art work.

I felt slightly inadequate with my minor limb transformation, but chatting to this amazing artist who plied her trade not on canvas but on cutis was worth the final tap of a buzzing be on my red and inflamed skin.?At the end, we both looked down proudly at our new stencilled sibling on my arm, and it dawned on me that Becky had just performed a transformation.?Using her artistic skills, she had just changed another person, in a small way in terms of skin area but in a huge way in terms of attitude.?Her amazing artistic skills, and her imagination where being applied to my arm and because of that I would never quite be the same again.?A little bit of Becky, her mind, her talent, her creativity, would forever be part of me.

After the clingfilm had been wrapped around my arm, Becky showed me the stockpiles of this see thru food wrapping they had amassed, they must not waste any food, I walked proudly into the daylight and drove home just that little bit transformed, that little bit proud of myself, and a little bit sore but incredibly excited to see when the pain and swelling had subsided what the final result would be.

And of course, all of this got me thinking about digital transformation.

Change and transformation can sometimes only happen when somebody else prompts us into action.?That initial excitement of getting the ‘transformation voucher’ is equally matched with a huge amount of trepidation, especially as they say in Amazon, when it is a two door change, there is no walking back through.?That little nudge into having to make decisions about what transformational change you need to make forces you to work out what it new really means to your business, your customers, your colleagues.?Yes, we may have dreamt about what could be if we acted, but not until we are sat down and told to make a decision that will live with for a long time after the initial decision, do we really have to sign the final waver form and accept that we are willing and ready to make it happen.?To get to that point shouldn’t be done in haste, but, at some point we do have to book that appointment and lay back and go through the bee stings to come out of the other side looking and feeling different. For if we never change we don't stay the same, we simply go backwards.

And then comes the scary bit, we have to put ourselves in somebody else’s hands.

When we all sit with customers saying, ‘we want your business and we won’t let you down’ do we really understand the trust they are putting in us? And are we willing, like Becky, to look somebody up and down and say, look, you haven’t thought about this enough, you haven’t really chosen me or your new design for you business in the right way, I think you go need to look for somebody else.

Becky could have taken my order for transformation and trotted out something she wasn’t happy with, but she didn’t.?She knew that transformation is about matching up the right transformation artist with the right customer and together defining an outcome both will be proud to take a picture of and pop on their insta page.

So, in my case a 3 inch square of my body has now been transformed.?But it has changed quite a bit of me, in a very personal way, as digital transformation however large or small will change a business, how it acts, how it feels even, in a very personal way.?Not all transformation is big and bold and on your forearm.?We know that the digital front end experiences that delight our customers need to be matched with some artistry in the back office, even though for many that transformation will only ever be seen by those seeing your business with its shirt off.

But, now the pain is a long distant memory, and the beauty in my eyes of the change Becky made have stopped scabbing over, I can say this is my first tattoo because of course, I am now considering where to go next.?Thankfully I have two forearms, and a few things I would be proud to have permanently marked for display.?I may even have the courage to buy the next transformation voucher myself.