When Tess Morgan's son came home with a tattoo, she was griefstricken. She knew her reaction was OTT (he's 21) but it signalled a change in their relationship
“’It’s just a tattoo,’ he says, when the silence goes on so long that we have nearly fallen over the edge of it into a pit of black nothingness. ‘It’s not as if I came home and said I’d got someone pregnant.’ It seems to me, unhinged by shock, that this might have been the better option. His father asks, ‘Does it hurt?’ ‘Yes,’ I say, cutting across this male bonding. ‘It does. Very much.’ For three days, I can’t speak to my son. I can hardly bear to look at him.”
I can’t believe this isn’t a joke.














