The most beautiful kid in the world

I have the most beautiful kid in the world. And i am not saying it in the normal mum way, she is beautiful. You can't argue this. Just look at the pictures. They are not professional pictures just me and her hanging out watching f1. Her favourite driver is Jenson Button, just like me. She thinks he is gonna win this year. We will see come 16th March.

She is 8 now. I am not sure I am old enough to have an 8 year old.

I now have the fear. The fear that my little lady is growing up. There is nothing wrong with her growing up. But the fear is she will grow up into someone I don't recognise. I want her to be a free spirit. I actively encourage her to continue with her art that makes her happy. We spend a lot of time listening to music. I am always trying to force the awesomeness of the foo fighters on her and explaining why one direction are actual morons.

The other thing that is looming out there in the future, like a squirrel with a machine gun, cute but dangerous, is boys. We have a deal that she will not have a boyfriend until she has finished her a-levels. She agrees to that at the moment but she is not yet one of them horrible little bastards called teenagers.

Wish me luck!

All my tattoos

I have tattoos. Currently I have 16 or 15.

The maths involved is as follows:
Right leg 3. This shall be my flowery 'sock'
Middle finger left hand 1. Coming out though
Stomach 2. My beautiful swallows by Shaun bonanas
Left arm 2: one one my 13s and something rubbish
Right arm 4: eventually this will be my sleeve by Sam ricketts
Left ribs 1: seemed like a good idea
Back 3: tribal shit from being 18. Kids name. And a beautiful anchor and ship piece.
Left leg: ha-pea

This coming weekend i shall be adding 3 more to my collection. I love every single one of my tattoos and they all have stories that will probably bore you but I will share each one in time.

This weekend Scott Owen at Mantra Tattoo will be adding a robot with a ghetto blaster to my left leg. I have decided this will be my leg of fun stuff that makes me smile.
The robot is saying beep and was drawn entirely by my beautiful kid. She doesn't want to get any tattoos. I find that surprising as I have so many but i look around me and I live in a world where there are very few tattoos on show and the ones that are are little 'girly' ones.

As I am more tattooed than most in my world I come in for a lot of criticism.

'you'll be covered soon' - that's the point

'how will you look when you are a nan' - who said the kid is having a kid

'what happens when you get married?' - I am 29 and very much single. I can't see love heading this way anytime soon. And if it ever does I am sure my future imaginary husband will have seen my tattoos and know what he is in for.

My favourite though came from a complete stranger at one of them terrible corporate Christmas parties "I like your tattoos, don't get anymore though". I was very much confused by this statement and just replied with "thanks for showing me the error of my ways. I was lost before I found you"

Let's get back to that imaginary husband. I cannot imagine he would not have tattoos. When I am in that dream land between awake and asleep where the depression can't get you I see him and he has loads of tattoos. And not them trendy chino wearing trendy ones. Beautiful pieces of art by amazing artists as well as the ones that hold all the memories. Just like mine.

All I can say is my love of this art form has lead me to meet some people in my life that I wouldn't have normally come across. Every new tattoo I get makes me feel more and more like me and less and less like the girl who who once spent 2 solid weeks in bed either sleeping or crying.

Strange pangs

I have these strange pangs of guilt that keep me awake at night. Nothing horrendous. I haven't killed anyone. But about being a single mum.

See I am a rare breed. I am a single mum. But, I work full time. I don't know of many of me. I am sure they are out there some where. But I don't know them.

Add to this my place of work is 40 miles away from my house. It makes for some "late" nights. Now I don't mean that I am getting home at midnight. I just mean I am losing valuable kid time to the motorway.
And this bothers me.

The other pang is the petrol bill that comes with this. £70 a week. Not massive compared to them highly paid executive, Audi driving, business bitches out there. I am not one of these bitches

But alas this money takes away from my 2 favourite things- the kid and getting tattoos.

These pangs are little devils. They wake me at 3am and cause me headaches like you won't believe. But I hope the kid grows to understand that maybe I am not around as much as other mums but I go out to work so we can pay our own way. We are skint all the time. But Spring is coming and that means tree climbing and running round fields. Free fun is probably the best fun.