Bats.

I’ve recently decided on my first tattoo. A tattoo of a bat.

The reason for this is not just because they look cool. Well they do right? But also because of my childhood fascination with them.

Some may have called it obsession. Maybe it was.

But I LOVED them.

My favourite childhood toy was a TY called Batty and I took him everywhere.

He was light brown in colour, had darker brown pieces of felt that formed the claws on top of his wings which expanded about a foot across, and his best feature were his big dark brown glass eyes which softened his face.

I loved the little fuzz ball so much that he brought me to tears on several occasions. The first vivid memory I have of this is when I lost him when I was in Year 4. It was in form time that I realised and I was in hysterics trying to explain to my form tutor, Mr Freeman, how much Batty meant to me and how lost I felt without him. Luckily all I had done was left him in the car that morning. Panic over.

The second occasion was when Batty’s cute little felt claws suddenly disappeared. Cut clean off. Still to this day I blame one of the girls in my class at Primary School.

The obsession didn’t stop here though.

When I went to Centre Parks I bought Batty a little companion, the exclusive smaller, multi-coloured version of him. Then I did an entire project on Bats in Primary School, explaining their different breeds, what they ate, how echolocation works – the lot. And finally in Year 7 when we had to invent our own religion in Religious Studies. Mine was ‘Batism’ – yes, the worshipping of bats – which was all put onto bat-shaped pieces of paper.

I may have been a slightly deluded child, but the memories stand out above the rest. So I’ll have an interesting story to tell once my tattoo is finished.