The Right Leg Begins

If you read the last post, you'll know how long I've been waiting for this day. Decades, really. So it won't surprise you that I did everything right in the lead-up… and then couldn't sleep.

I'd been hydrating for days. Moisturising religiously. Early night planned. And I still lay there waking up, and waking up, and waking up again. Four hours, if I'm being honest. But here's the strange thing: I didn't wake up tired. I woke up buzzing. Ticked every box on the prep list, sat down to a proper breakfast, and set off for the train.

Which was cancelled.

Not the omen I was hoping for. Thankfully I'd built in an hour of safety net, so the next train did the job, and before long I was stepping off at King's Cross with that low hum of anticipation you get when something you've imagined for years is about to become real.

I remember thinking to myself, quite clearly: today is the day. Now is the time.

I walked around the block twice before going in. Not from nerves exactly, more a kind of settling. Going over it all one last time. Then into reception, up to the studio, and finally, face to face with Deneka.

He'd brought some rough sketches, and we sat and talked them through: the koi and how it moves through the water, the flowers, how it all arranges itself around the leg. What struck me most was the philosophy behind it, which I'd sum up as simple complexity. There aren't many motifs in this design. A handful of elements. But the way they wrap the leg, the way they flow into and around each other, makes it genuinely complex to look at. Less, done with real intent, becoming more.

Then came the drawing-on. Something nobody warns you about: a marker on a freshly shaved leg is surprisingly prickly. For a moment I caught myself thinking hang on, this isn't even the needle yet. Those felt tips are harder than you'd think. But the design went on, and it looked right, and I had everything laid out beside the table ready to go: drinks, food, the lot.

And then I got on the table. And that was it.

We started at the head of the koi. And honestly… it didn't hurt as much as I'd expected. You notice it, obviously, you're never not aware of it. But the thing people say about the first ten minutes turned out to be completely true. There's more pain in those first ten minutes than in everything that follows. After that, we settled into the rhythm of it. Talking.

We got a good amount of the outline done in this first sitting, as you can see from the photos: the koi, the chrysanthemum towards the bottom, and a bit of the back of the leg.

One lesson for next time: I drank far too much. Multiple toilet breaks.

Wrapped up for the journey back, then unwrapped, washed, and now onto open-air healing with moisturiser.

This is the start of the journey. Twenty-odd years of wanting, and now the first lines are in.

Pretty incredible.