After five years of marriage we have decided to replace our metallic wedding rings with a different symbol of our commitment to each other on our wedding fingers that is more sailing friendly. Metallic bands are great in the regular world but in the sailing world we risk trapping the ring in winches possibly de-gloving ourselves, or less dramatic we get blisters from rope against the ring, or less so we can’t remove the ring on a hot swollen finger.

So we’ve opted for a tattoo or two on our wedding fingers which can easily be worn every day in addition to our regular rings or without. We looked at loads of ideas, initially just a band to replace the band but Janine found a really cool discrete alternative of just three dots on the upper finger, and a unique identification of each other on the under side: our first name initial.

We’d talked about this tattoo for months before we moved to Southsea but feared walking into some dirty tattoo shop. We wanted a clean place we could trust, and so it was only when we got settled here and got to know the KingShip Tattoo Studios conveniently opposite our flat and soon made an appointment.

Today we have our tattoo’s and loved the process and care Daniel took to make sure we were entirely happy with each step of the process. We’ve been starring at each others dots and letters the whole evening.

A few days later, almost two weeks, some of the detail of the letter has disappeared and now my ‘j’ and only the dot of the j remains. Janine’s ‘b’ is now an ‘l’ so we’ve talked to Dan and we’ll go back for a touch up.