Read my lips

sir – I saw many tattoos during my time as an Army dentist, including some inside the mouth.

On one occasion I saw a beautifully crafted tattoo inside the lower lip of a Welsh soldier recently returned from a tour of duty in Hong Kong.

He told me that, after a night out, his mates had delivered him to a tattoo parlour, where the tattooist had engraved his Christian name – Gareth – in Chinese characters.

I have often wondered if, in translation, that is what it really said. Colonel James Hardy (retd) Farnham, Surrey