Tatoos

I'm not a big fan of tattoos, although I've seen some lovely ones, and some very meaningful ones about 'The Fallen', but not had one myself - Until today.
Bella had this tattoo kit for her birthday and wanted me to try some out. I selected some that meant something to me.
The Turtle reminds me of my time in Masirah, Oman, when we used to go out at dawn to lift exhausted turtles back into the sea. They would die very quickly, when the sun rose, if we didn't do it.
The Seahorse is on the crest of the Royal Air Force 203 Maritime Squadron, when I was stationed in Malta. I had a 9 hour 'Jolly' with them over the Mediterranean, around the area of Pantalleria, which is between Tunisia and Sicily. We were hunting a French submarine on a NATO exercise. She, the submarine, would disappear and hide somewhere underwater, did this about six times but could not avoid detection by the Nimrod (see extra, Nimrod taking off from RAF Luqa, Malta). It was an exciting 9 hours from take-off until landing. On the way back to Malta we sometimes diverted from the route to take photographs of Soviet (USSR) shipping, a couple of them were those spy ships in the guise of trawlers. They would have been watching us and then sailed off to the operational area to pick up the Sonobouys we dropped to detect the submarine. The Cold war was sometimes frightening but elements of it were exciting, and even fun at times.
And the Skull and Crossed Bones for the biker element in me, although I ride with the Royal British Legion so we aren't that sort of biker group.
The other photo is the tattoo artist, killing herself laughing because I was trying to take a photograph of her. I kept saying "Bella, look at me, look at me Bella, Bella, Bella, look at me" and the more I said it the more she wouldn't look and the more she laughed.