Blindingly Obvious

We were in Sainsbury's in Ripon, my good lady wife and myself, stocking up with some essentials to make a light supper in our holiday cottage (having just enjoyed a full Sunday lunch) and whilst waiting to pay I casually cast my eyes over the magazines at the checkout. This is a very helpful way of staying abreast of the most important news stories of the day "My teenage sex hell", "Rick and Dolores - She wants him but he wants her sister", "My dear old grandmother the axe murderer" - you probably know the sort of thing. The beauty of it all is that there is no need to read the stories or to have the faintest idea who anyone is - it is all laid out in the screaming headlines and quite often you get two or three perfectly serviceable exclamation marks thrown in completely free.

I was, I confess, taken aback by the story on the top left of the cover of some piece of obvious junk called Closer. A picture of some bird in a bikini, cocking her head at the camera in the most approved Lady Diana style and sporting a pair of glaring red eyeballs of the kind that are normally only seen on vampires in the sort of video games that I play from time to time. The strap-line was riveting, so much so that I had to take a picture of it and here it is.

My eyeball tattoos could have blinded me. (by "Mum of three")

Well, I must say. Who knew? You go to some back street tattoo parlour, negotiate for a pair of crossed hearts and the slogan "Elvis - always in my heart", the hefty bloke with the shaky hands rolls his fag to the corner of his mouth, powers up his drill and says "Look up at the ceiling, my darling, and for heaven's sake don't blink". What on earth could go wrong?

I wonder if the same artist does brain transplants on the side, for mums of three who clearly have far more important things in their lives than keeping an eye (tattoed or not) on their offspring. I think she could do with one.