BRYONY GORDON: I'm getting 'DAZZLE' tattooed on me as a birthday present... here's the inspiring reasons why

Brooke Shields arrived at an awards do this week in bright yellow Crocs. She had to wear them after surgery, but once you discover the unbelievably comfortable but hideous shoes, you can’t un-discover them. I’m still in my only-for-the-holiday pair.   

With two weeks to go until I turn 44, my husband has begun his annual quest to buy me a birthday present he deems appropriately ‘useful’.

‘I was wondering if you would like a new barbecue,’ he ­mentioned the other night at dinner.

‘No thanks,’ I replied, trying not to spit out my salad.

‘Perhaps a set of blinds to replace the ones that fell down in the spare room?’

No response to this one, other than a grunt of laughter from our 11-year-old. He persevered: ‘How about some hiking shoes?’

With all my strength, I stopped myself from asking for a divorce as a birthday present. Instead, I told him what I’d decided to gift myself: my very first tattoo.

Angelina Jolie on the red carpet this week showing off her bold new swallow tattoo

Yes, you heard that right. I don’t want a barbecue, but nor do I want a handbag, or a spa day, or some nice jewellery I’ll probably only lose anyway. What I really, really want is a stranger in a dingy shop called Kinky Ink to mark my bare skin for life.

And if I had any doubts, they were dispelled when I saw Angelina Jolie on the red carpet this week, with a bold new accessory: a swallow tattoo above her breasts, on her sternum.

The 49-year-old is said to have chosen the bird as a symbol of her freedom, as she finalises her divorce from Brad Pitt. But some are saying the location of the tattoo is also a way for Jolie to show the liberation she feels after her preventative double mastectomy in 2013. The death of her mother from ovarian cancer had led her to discover she carried the BRCA1 gene, which gave her a higher risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

Whatever Jolie’s reason, I saw it as a sign to confirm my booking at the tattoo parlour. This was a big moment for me: while she has been ­covering herself in body art since she was knee-high to a grasshopper, I am still ink-free.

‘Are you having some sort of midlife crisis?’ asked my ­husband, not unreasonably.

As a teenager I was terrified of needles, but mostly my parents’ disapproval. Like many middle-aged, middle-class people in the Nineties, they saw tattoos as common, and back then, being common was the worst thing in the world, worse even than getting pregnant.

Then came the Noughties, and the rise of the lower-back tattoo — as ubiquitous as misogyny for young women in the early 21st century. As if to prove this, they were known as ‘tramp stamps’.

So while my friends came back from gap years with ­dolphins on their hips or Chinese characters on their arms — which the tattoo artist promised meant ‘peace’ but turned out to say ‘chicken noodle soup’ — I remained ink-free.

I chose to deface my body in other, arguably far more harmful, ways: drinking and taking drugs and sleeping with unsuitable men. I didn’t need a tattoo or piercings to rebel, because I had plenty of bad habits that were easier to hide than a giant set of angel wings between my shoulder blades.

So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise I’m considering a tattoo now, as a dull, middle-aged mum, who lives vicariously through her daughter. Here is a chance to remind myself I’m capable of more exciting things than watching Grey’s Anatomy re-runs.

Ink-free until now, Bryony Gordon has decided to have a tattoo for her 44th birthday

The idea first crossed my mind in 2018, when I was 38 and about to celebrate my first year free from alcohol. I thought tattooing my sobriety date on my wrist would mark the moment I decided to turn my life around. But the new, sober, sensible bit of my brain stopped me: what if I relapsed, and ended up with a forearm that looked like a bar code? Plus, would it give off ­‘mutton-dressed-as-lamb’ vibes?

I parked the idea, until a few months ago, when a dear friend (also in her 40s) told me she was going to get a sparkling diamond tattooed on her ring finger, to replace the engagement and wedding rings she had flung in the face of the soon-to-be-ex husband she had caught cheating on her.

‘I don’t want to look at my left hand and feel sad,’ she said, ­defiantly. ‘I want to be reminded of how damn dazzling I am.’

I enthusiastically waved her on her way to the tattoo parlour, and began researching my own designs. Because I realised ­middle age is actually the perfect time to get a tattoo.

You don’t have to worry about what it’s going to look like when you’re old because you already are old, and you don’t have to fret about having it for the rest of your life because you’re ­beginning to realise the rest of your life might not be all that long.

Plus, what better way to reclaim our bodies than with a tattoo? With peri-menopause attempting to wreak havoc on everything from my sex life to my sleep and my mood, an inking feels like putting two fingers up at my hormones. And after decades of worrying about what I look like, now I don’t give a damn. I don’t give a damn about cellulite, I don’t give a damn about what my bum looks like in a bikini and I ­certainly don’t give a damn about what my mum and dad are going to say when I show them the ­tattoo that will say ‘DAZZLE’ in bold black lettering.

I’ve chosen this in part because of my friend’s inspiring words, but also because it so neatly encapsulates what I am trying to do as I turn 44. So much of my life has been about hiding my light under a bushel so I don’t accidentally blind anyone, and keeping myself small so I don’t upset anyone simply by existing.

Getting a tattoo that reads ‘Dazzle’ is a reminder not to do that any more — an instruction to go out every day and be ­fearlessly, unapologetically me.

I’m all booked in on the ­morning of my birthday. I’m thinking about having it tattooed on my right wrist, but perhaps I will ­follow Angelina’s lead and get it on my chest. Now that would be a present for my husband.

Keir, saving has nothing to do with class 

Forget how our political leaders define a woman, the issue of this election is how they define a ­working person. Keir Starmer has let us know he believes it’s someone who doesn’t have any savings. ‘People who . . . don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble,’ he explained when pressed this week.

A friend who is an NHS nurse prides himself on putting aside 20 per cent of his earnings each month, and yet on the opposite end of the scale, you have the likes of Sir Bradley Wiggins, once ­reputedly worth as much as £13 million, now apparently bankrupt and sofa-surfing.

In my experience, the ability to save has more to do with a person’s attitude towards money than with how much of it they take home.

This is important for Sir Keir to understand, because for most ­ordinary working people, savings are not just about having a little extra for a rainy day. They are about existing with a solid sense of security.

So let’s not pretend that having savings equals being stinking rich. The truth is it’s just a sign of good mental health.

• Brooke Shields arrived at an awards do this week in bright yellow Crocs. She had to wear them after surgery, but once you discover the unbelievably comfortable but hideous shoes, you can’t un-discover them. I’m still in my only-for-the-holiday pair.  

Actress Brooke Shields in her yellow perils. Once you Croc you won't stop says Bryony Gordon

Confidential

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have found lifting heavy weights is the key to a long life. Having recently taken up Olympic Weightlifting — no laughing at the back — I can report it’s also the key to feeling like an absolute legend.