A friend had booked the accommodation for our short golfing break in Cornwall.  I could not blame him for the torrential rain and howling gale, the but location was all down to him.

I do not watch a lot of television, so when people started saying things like, “Have you come to see where Doc Martin is filmed then?” I was a bit bemused.

Port Isaac is tiny.  And remote.  And completely incapable of receiving a mobile phone signal.  This may be an attraction for someone trying to get away from it all, but I am busy twenty-first century man who needs to feel connected.  At least there were some good pubs.  It was in one such pub that we had our first encounter with the locals.

“And this is [name forgotten]“ said one of the friendlier barflies, “He’s the pot washer in your hotel actually.”

“Really?” I replied,  “You do a great job, you could almost eat your dinner off them.”

As the night wore on it turned out it was pot washers 21st birthday, and to celebrate this fact, he had got a tattoo.  Upon reaching such a milestone in a man’s life, I can understand the need to mark the occasion with something memorable.  I marked my own 21st by being sick out of my nose by 10pm, a cherished memory.  It did not take much persuading on my part to convince him to lift his sleeve and show us his new body art.

“It’s a big fish?” I enquired.

“Yeah, because I live near the sea and that.”

He had a point.  He did.  Probably still does, as I would hate to think he would move to the city just days after having approximately four hundred fish scales painstakingly etched into his upper arm.

“Do you fish a lot then?”

“A bit, I suppose.”

“So has the other arm got a rod on it with a line going across the top of your shoulders?”

“No, why?”

I have never understood tattoos, and I feel quite sure that this young man will wake up in the sometime soon and scream, “What the FUCK have I done?”

Or maybe he won’t.