Sagging angels, wilting lilies, drooping lines from love sonnets, withered swallows, flaccid snakes, limp dragons, shrivelled babies’ names: this will be the view inside the British bathroom, and at the British seaside, and in British hospital beds and morgues, in 2060, when today’s tattoo-wearers now in their prime will be in their seventies and eighties.
None of us thinks we’re going to grow old, but (as happened so cruelly to 1960s rock stars) age will creep up, and the skin will stretch, even that of the handsomest, healthiest tattoo trendsetters with the best body art money can buy.
One such is David Beckham, whose four birds flying up from the floral foliage on his neck towards his left ear and on towards the mini-solar system on his head we gazed at while watching the Beckham four-parter on Netflix, aware that those were just a tiny fraction of the 80 or so tattoos covering his torso and limbs, on which there is now hardly any space left.
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