Getting a Tattoo in the Time of Covid

The plan for today is to get a new tattoo; something which seems kind of stupid to do at a time of global pandemic.

A little context: the tattoo - a homage to my grandmother’s New York apartment building and my favourite movie which features it: Ghostbusters (as well as a small anarchy A to celebrate the publication of my book) - was originally scheduled for April, and I made the booking in February, back when the idea of lockdowns and quarantines still seemed like something out of a zombie movie.

Some further context: since March 17th I have left my house only a handful of times. Twice for a small walk around the block so I could post something important to meet a deadline (US tax return and my PLR application for Authentic Democracy); three times to visit a National Trust place for a longer, socially distanced, open-air walk around the grounds; three other times without setting foot outside the car, going for a drive to keep the engine ticking over; and last week, when we drove to Ipswich to visit my wife’s parents for the first time since Christmas and I went to a shop for the first time in a mask. I have asthma and am therefore considered “vulnerable” to Covid 19. I took, and continue to take, lockdown, social distancing, and all the other measures put in place to prevent community spread very seriously from day one. Related to this, in my work as a teacher, I was lobbying my school to close its doors long before the government finally forced them to. When the government allowed them to open up again for small groups of year 10 and 12 students, I continued to stay home and teach remotely, seeing no good reason at all for students to put themselves, their teachers, or the families of everyone exposed at risk. Of the movement outside my home since March 17th (the day I stopped going into work), the vast majority took place only after school broke up. If neither I nor my wife were going into work to ensure we, or anyone we came into contact with, didn’t get Covid 19, it seemed hypocritical to go elsewhere. Only the car drives and the short walks were done during term time until June 28th, two weeks from the end of term, where we took our first cautionary visit to the grounds of the National Trust’s Charlcote Park. Everything else happened once school broke up; tentative steps back into the world, and only when necessary.

I am not agoraphobic. I do miss aspects of the old world and would love to get back to them. But I understand risk and benefit. I needed to post those items. The car needed to turn its engine over. We needed to see something beyond our four walls for sanity’s sake and walk somewhere with fresh air, that wasn’t our elliptical machine. We needed to see my in-laws. It had been too long and with this deadly disease, who knows how much time any of us have left? Even the visit to B&Q was necessary to finish a project my wife had been working on all lockdown in the garden - an amazing new patio which needed a few bags more of sand to complete. Either of us would have been happy to go out shopping for necessary items throughout lockdown if required, but we have been lucky enough to have been able to get everything safely delivered to us. Likewise, in our jobs, we were lucky between March and July that teaching continued to possible via online delivery systems.

But other things which might be nice but are not necessary, we’ve decided to sacrifice. Much as we’d love to pop to a coffee shop and see a film in the cinema, for now, with plenty of good coffee and film viewing options at home, there is simply no need to take that risk. The benefit is not worth it. Likewise, this week, and last, we were due to be in America for a three week road trip vacation. We cancelled it. Whether the travel would have been possible, it was no longer desirable. Things are just too unsafe to take all those daily risks. There is no vaccine, people are still dying, and, most important of all, we could get infected and remain asymptomatic, unwittingly passing the virus on to someone more vulnerable than we are. Carelessness and unnecessary risk can cost lives.

So why the tattoo? Why go to a place in close quarters with other people (albeit masked and visored) and let them cut you open, giving yourself an open wound and adding the possibility of other infection to the list of pre-existing risks in your life and risk Covid in the process?

Honestly, the answer is a fuck it sense of fatalism brought about by the disregard to my, and all other teacher and students’, health and safety shown by the government.

When everything closed down in March, the tattoo was rescheduled automatically for sometime in June. Then, as lockdown continued, for sometime in July. I ignored every text about it because the prospect of tattoo parlours actually reopening seemed impossible each time I got one, and the re-scheduled appointments were all tentative as a result. However, when someone from the tattoo place actually called me to confirm, I specifically refused the July date and asked for something mid-August instead. My reasoning was that if the place was ever going to re-open, it would be more likely it was open then than in July, and also that it would be utterly wrong of me to refuse to go into work and yet be happy going into a busy city centre and getting myself tattooed. Mid-August was during the holidays. My time. And also, mid-August I would know what the deal was with returning to school in September. My feeling is that absolutely nothing has changed with Covid 19 since March, when the decision was taken to close the schools. As such, my personal view is that it remains completely unsafe to have a full re-opening. At the end of July, the Department for Education released their guidance on how the re-opening would work and how to make it safe. It a nutshell: you can’t, and their concept of safety is utter bullshit. The main idea they have is so-called “bubbles”: groups of staff and students who stay separate and never mix with other bubbles. But this is impossible in a secondary setting, where year group bubbles (the proposed idea) are 150+ students, each being taught by multiple specialist teachers who “pop” every bubble that they teach, and containing students with siblings in other bubbles, all of whom travel to school on buses which cross-contaminate the bubbles even further. A total clusterfuck.

Much safer, would be to continue teaching remotely. And if this had been clearly the plan from the end of last term we would have had months by now to plan for it properly and iron out the kinks from the ad hoc and rushed adaptation to remote learning we were forced into in March. We could plan and structure it more effectively, consider who might genuinely need some face-to-face contact time in school and how to do it safely, and operate on a sort of rota system of mostly out of school but occasionally in-school learning which could observe social distancing and keep communities safe. As that is not happening, and on September 1st I, my wife, and every other teacher and student in the country (as well as all the many support staff that go into the running of a school) will be walking into a deathtrap of infection vectors and inevitable community spread, without any concern for our wellbeing (and only concern that the economy can get moving again) my feeling about the tattoo became this: if on September 1st I am being unnecessarily put at risk for something I do not want (because remote learning, if done right, can be just as good as what can be done in the classroom), then I may as well not deny myself something equally risky and pointless but which I actually do want. If I get Covid 19 from getting this tattoo, just as if I got it the handful of other times I left the house, it would suck, but at least I got it for a reason, doing something I felt I needed to do. If I get Covid 19 from September, because schools were re-opened prematurely and dangerously, there is no benefit gained from the risk, no upside or feeling that it was worth it, and the infection will not only “suck”, it will lie at the feet of the gross negligence of the government and education system in this country which forced me and my wife back to work.

Tattooists, after all, have to adhere to all kinds of health and safety guidelines. Masks and visors will be worn. Lots of sanitising. I will have to wear a mask for the whole thing. Only a certain number are allowed in the store at any given time and everything is socially distanced except for the tattooist and the client, who are both masked up. None of that is the case at school, where my colleagues and I will be forced into poorly ventilated rooms with 30 or so children, no social distancing and no masks. Incredibly, as I write this it feels safer to go have a guy cut open my arm and shoot me full of ink than it does to stand in the classroom and teach.

So yeah. Getting the tattoo today is pretty stupid, but not nearly as stupid as going back to work will be in September. If I’m being forced to do the latter against my will, then choosing to do the former which will actually bring me some pleasure seems at least like something stupid worth doing.