100 YEARS OLD AND STILL HANDY, DANDY AND SUSHI...

KNOWING something like the back of one’s hand is, I have long thought, a degree of familiarity that is somewhat overestimated. If my right-hand, for example, were to go missing, I very much doubt that I could give a decent description of its back to the police.

Enumeration of the fingers and thumb would pose little problem but drawing a map of its veins or even informing them of the location of its freckles would, I fear, be beyond me.

In fact, apart from the knowledge that it is covered with a delicate and sparse amount of gossamery hair, I doubt that I could be said to know the back of my right hand at all.

On the other hand, quite literally in this case, my left hand would, thanks to the events of last night, be a very different matter. Indeed, when I woke this morning and caught a glimpse of the back of my left hand, I was taken, appropriately enough, aback.

For the back of my hand now boasts a tattoo of a skeletal hand with a butterfly perching on the thumb. I have been assured this will wash off easily, as it is only a transfer, not a true tattoo, but it survived my morning bath and I am beginning to get concerned.

My acquisition of the skeletal hand plus butterfly, I should explain, is due to the fact that I am a gentleman who takes great delight in superb sushi.

It was the sushi that had lured me to Sushi Shop (mysushishop.co.uk) in Marylebone where they were launching a new limited edition sushi box. The box itself had been designed by highly acclaimed US tattooist Scott Campbell (whose waiting list extends for two to three years) while the sushi inside it has been inspired by those designs and created by Sushi Shop’s French sushi chef Pierre Boudy.

I watched Boudy demonstrate his unique style of Japanese-French sushi fusion and the results were delicious. A citrus salmon roll (with salmon, chives, avocado, croutons, sesame, lime mayonnaise and something called masago), a spinach and tempura prawn maki (using a French-style guacamole and spinach leaves instead of the usual seaweed) and other concoctions all showing the perfect flavour balance only the finest chefs can manage.

And best of all, at the end, Pierre showed me how he cuts his maki rolls so that they are all exactly the same height. My own sushi may never get close to his flavoursome brilliance but at least they will, in future, look good when lined up on a plate.

I was interrupted while stuffing myself with his sushi however by a decorous young lady asking why I didn’t have a tattoo. She then led me by hand to the tattooing table despite my mild protests.

That’s where my being a gentleman came into play. It is one of the features of us gentlemen, indeed it is close to being a defining aspect, that we always give way to the demands of decorous young ladies. So I consented to her daubing a transfer of one of Scott’s designs onto the back of my left hand.

I chose the skeletal hand plus butterfly because they didn’t have a sloth. I must suggest this to Mr Campbell if we ever meet.