Tattoos

 

This is one of my favourite pictures of Cro and me together. It was taken on Feb 7th 2023, just after Cro had hers done to match mine which had been done in early December 2022. They say the same thing, just that Cro has smaller font for her more delicate, feminine arm. I think she hit me when I said that, but she chose details like that, and was an excellent typographer, so certainly outranks me on spacing and kerning.

About a week after that photo Cro was told she would be dead in six weeks, but then immunotherapy gave her a wonderful stolen season of Spring and she eventually died on July 5th. I love this photo because it proves that both of us were the first in the family to get tats, overtaking all the next generation, I think. Though of course the kids may have some hidden unadmitted tattoos and got in first.

The two lines of Chinese do not say 'Turkey Sandwich' or 'Dishonour before Death', which I have been informed are provably real Chinese tattoos on Westerner. But both of us spoke and read a bit of Chinese and would have always checked in any case, cos we are not idiots.

The two lines are the final couplet of our wedding poem 'Poem of our Love' by Guan Dao Sheng, a 14th century female chinese poet. The two lines are

生同一个秦

死同一个椁

Which translates as

In life one quilt 

In death one tomb

I like tattoos if they have meaning to you. A relative of mine has a pig tattoo for an excellent reason.

And if and when the stem cell transplant delivers me back out into the world I am going to get a tattoo of a chrysalis，a butterfly and NHS in nice blue print. See if I don't!