For people of a certain age, we have measured our lives not with coffee spoons, but with David Beckham tattoos. We remember exactly where we were when we heard about the Guardian Angel on his back, his misspelt Sanskrit one (“Vihctoria”. Awks) and “Brooklyn” written in gothic font.
But in the same way you stop being able to see distinct shapes after a minor concussion to the head, we stopped paying attention to Beckham’s arsenal of body art somewhere after tattoo number 37. That his torso now resembled the Sistine Chapel as rendered by the charcoal sketch artists who are located just adjacent to Leicester Square tube was just another fact of life.
Until that is his latest addition: a big horse’s head on his neck. Visually, it’s pretty eye catching, somewhere between the Lloyds bank logo, the horse emoji and what Jack Woltz finds instead of a bedside mint in The Godfather. But we are scratching our heads about what the image represents. We are told the Beckhams enjoy horse riding as a pastime, so there’s that. If we were ink happy, we might get an etching of our favourite pastime: watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians on an endless loop while drip-feeding ourselves nachos from Sainsbury’s Basics range. With a caption written in ancient Latin. Obvs.
But really, like Leonard Shelby, the Guy Pearce character in Memento, this tattoo definitely has some sort of meaning, we are just unsure if even Beckham knows what it is.
