Over the course of the last few decades, I’ve had no less than seven tattoo parlour appointments and have managed to go through with exactly zero. Ok, I might be an indecisive commitment-phobe, but in any case, reflecting on the things I would have had, which ranged from decorative to potentially deranged (constellations, eye of Horus, photo-realistic flowers, esoteric occult symbols, a camel, Snoopy, and a quote I’m frankly too embarrassed to share) I have to say I’m pretty relieved.

Now, finally, in my mid-forties, I’ve decided it’s time, and what is more, I’ve discovered that I’m not alone. A significant number of my contemporaries are either planning or have recently had their first tattoo. In fact, what I didn’t realise was that the number of people aged roughly 40 to 60, especially women, getting ‘inked’ is a globally growing phenomenon.

Tattoos aren’t a modern impulse. For thousands of years, they marked belonging, belief, protection; ways of recording meaning on the body long before anyone worried about aesthetics. In later Western culture, however, they slipped to the margins, predominantly associated with criminality, delinquency, and social deviance, becoming heavily stigmatised.

That shifted in the late 60s and early 70s, when counterculture and psychedelic art gave tattoos a second life, and again in the 80s, when punk turned them into a badge of defiance against the mainstream - unless, like Sid Vicious, you just used a razor blade to carve words into your chest. By the 90s era of MTV, the internet and celebrity culture, tattoos had crossed over completely, becoming a legitimate and largely unremarkable form of self-expression.

Not everyone noticed. My mother, for one, didn't. While allowing my sister and I to drink and smoke at an illegal age, she was puritanically opposed to things like Halloween, cartoons, and, as I later learnt, tattoos, so was incensed when, mid-teens, I disclosed my intention to get one.

"Tattoos are for misfits, miscreants and circus performers," she replied coldly. ‘You can get one when I’m dead.’ (She’s not, FYI).

She went on to eulogise about the desecration of my unsullied skin. And, even though she’s a staunch atheist, the ensuing monologue made me feel like the act was tantamount to self-disfigurement and might cause the very essence of my soul to become fundamentally corrupt.

There is a certain beauty to entirely unblemished skin, and with it an enduring illusion of purity, no matter how flawed or immoral you might be. It’s an idea that clings hardest to women and longest to youth. But an idea that only really survives if not much has happened to you yet. By your mid-forties, whatever life has thrown at you - childbirth, injury, ageing - that notion is as unrealistic as it is absurd.

So now, following a dog bite over the eye area, various accidents, several broken and kinked digits, freckles, sun spots, and a C-section scar that makes me look like I had an intimate date with Jack the Ripper, I really don’t feel the same. And neither do most people.

We all have friends with tattoos they regret - from a time when they were too young or too intoxicated to fully comprehend their actions; we’re talking dolphins, butterflies, birds, Japanese characters, Celtic designs, tree frogs, pots of marmite and the names of ex-lovers - remember Johnny Depp’s Winona Forever which, in a sadly prophetic way, was changed to Wino Forever post-split.

My friend Tara had Casper the Friendly Ghost on her taut teenage tummy. Then, over time, Tara’s stomach expanded, causing Casper’s head to grow disproportionately to his body, with the end result of him looking like a giant sperm. Apparently it has required years of explanation to those privileged enough to see it.

It takes time to truly understand your identity. When you're young, your tastes, principles, beliefs, and fidelities will often morph and change. However, when you're middle-aged, and provided you're not having an existential or climacteric crisis, you most likely know, and have accepted, who you really are. The scars you bear tell your story, and tattoos give tangible form to the invisible ones we carry with us.

Whether it's grief, love, or survival, the tattoo is as indelible as the experience it represents. It isn’t rebellion or crisis; it’s clarity. It’s choosing to mark a body that has otherwise been shaped by chance, circumstance, and endurance.

So I’m about to book appointment number eight, and it’s happening. I know exactly who I am and exactly what I want. Mother dearest will have to deal.