Let’s talk tattoos. 

Getting a tattoo for Christmas should be subject to same public warnings as getting a dog in the festive season – like dogs, a tattoo isn’t just for Christmas, it’s for life. 

A national industry with tattoo – or body art – studios everywhere, it’s a trend that is exactly that – a current obsession that will fade and pass, unlike the multi-coloured torso etchings.

A full sleeve, collar or full back work polarises the population; they are either full-on loved or make you wince. Everyone has an opinion.

Lovers insist tattoos are self-expression, beautiful body decorations that set their skin apart from everyone else; art that makes them unique.

Some insist they turn every day into a performance - a statement-making walking talking work of art.

Haters have none of it.

“Seeing a tattoo on a person is identical to my reaction when I see graffiti on a public building," one said.

Etching arms and torsos with Chinese statements, insects, animals or flowers is like sticking go-faster stripes on a spanking new Ferrari - they make a beautiful creation look cheap, others say.

Stage and screen national treasure Sheridan Smith told this week how she regrets wallpapering herself with tattoos when she was in a bad place and hopes her son, Billy, will never make indelible statements on his skin.

What looks fabulous on plumped up young skin is a different kettle of fish on ageing sagging wrinkled skin when the vibrancy of colour from the tattooist’s pen has long faded.

Regretting something that you have to look at every day and will never go away is a big burden to bear. 

How can anyone be 100 per cent sure that they want to impose something on themselves permanently?

Tastes change. Boredom sets in. Mindsets alter, but tattoos are there for life – unless you can afford hours of expensive intensive laser removal.

Smith got many of her tattoos during a breakdown in 2016 when she learnt of her father’s terminal cancer as a way of “self-destructing”, plastering herself in tattoos that "meant something to her.”

Now, those decisions mean she must sit in make up for three hours before filming to hide the floral designs on her upper arms.

Viewers of ITV’s The Real Full Monty raising awareness of cancer had an eyeful when former royal butler Paul Burrell flaunted his dragon on his buttock in memory of the Princess of Wales - she would be thrilled, I’m sure.

The over-50s are becoming new tattoo customers. Horses for courses. Everyone has their own opinions.

There is no way I would be able to decide on which tattoo let alone whether I could live with it for life.

My major fear would be that fashions change, and tattoos will have had their day, until the next time.

The dreadful mullet – long at the back, cut round the ears and short on the top - may be a hot style again now, but we all know how that turned out before, and hair grows out.

If fans of the Great Eyebrow Trend a few years ago had tattooed those thick black slug-like brows imagine how they would feel now the fashion is over?

There will be winners though – the canny who see a lucrative future career in tattoo removal.

Just say no

One of the greatest skills in life is feeling comfortable with saying no.

Mastering turning down invitations is tricky because most of us have weighty sense of obligation, are natural people pleasers and believe to say no is rude.

It isn’t rude, selfish or thoughtless.  If you really don’t want to do something, why do it? Saying no will not ruin a friendship. If it does, it was no friendship anyway.

We tend to overestimate the impact our no might have. Declining an invitation isn’t as much of a big deal as we believe.

Our time is precious. I could write a book as thick as an old telephone directory of all the events I felt I should attend rather wanted to, spending time with people I didn’t want to be with while not spending enough time with those I did.

Life is too short to blow your pipe out to please other people. It’s a lesson I wish I’d learned decades ago.

Just say no. Like Queen Elizabeth said, never apologise, never explain, and decline politely. It will change your life.

Some good will come from derby

That nervous sense of anticipation in the pit of my stomach has hung around all week, building every day.

The Norwich-Ipswich derby kicks off at Portman Road on Saturday lunchtime catapulting football lovers’ emotions to a whole new level.

It will be the first time in nearly five years that the teams have faced each other.

As a Suffolk-born girl brought up not just by an Ipswich Town supporter but a club talent scout, watching my first match at Portman Road in the 1970s, screaming when they lifted the FA Cup in 1978, I moved across the border to become the mother of dyed in the wool home and away Norwich fans and enjoyed supporting at Carrow Road.

Derby day is never easy.

The idea that fans contribute to food banks in the opposing community puts the match into perspective, makes fans think of something bigger than football and will make good come from it whatever the result.