Kate marks royal visit with a tattoo
THE Duchess of Cambridge became a tattooed lady yesterday – just for a day or two.
Visibly pregnant Kate became fascinated as she watched Asian women displaying art from their Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi cultural roots.
Seeing a henna hand drawing, she was asked, “Would you like one?” by Shajida Begum, 18.
The Duchess agreed and Shajida promptly drew a floral design with swirls on the Duchess’s right hand.
Kate asked: “What should I do with it afterwards?” Shajida told her: “Just let it dry and it should be fine.”
The teenager later added: “It will last a couple of days. She was asking when she should wash it off and we said, ‘When it gets flakey’.”
Dream
Kumareswaradas Ramanathas, project manager at Young Asian Voices, said the Duchess was decorated with safe natural brown bridal henna.
He added: “In two weeks it will be gone completely. It just leaves an orange stain on the skin.”
Next, Neelima Begum, 22, showed Kate, a selection of bindi – coloured dots traditionally made from vermilion powder and worn on the forehead by Asian women at celebrations.
“Can I take them back for Charlotte?” the Duchess asked, referring to her two-year-old daughter and pointing to a packet which was swiftly handed over.
Seven months pregnant Kate, 36, who was wearing a Seraphine maternity dress and a bottle green Dolce & Gabbana coat, was visiting Sunderland with Prince William to open The Fire Station, a £3.5million new music and arts hub housed in a formerly derelict fire brigade HQ.
They spent about an hour talking to Kate gets hand drawing, inset, and holds it over her baby bump. Right, the Duchess with William at bridge young people and watching performances and it was while chatting to women from Young Asian Voices that Kate acquired the henna “tattoo”.
The royal couple went on a walkabout to greet the 500-strong crowd.
William, who is president of the Football Association, decided not to discuss local team rivalry.
“I’d better not mention Newcastle and Sunderland,” he cheerily told Bea Burn, who had returned to her native city from her home in Pembrokeshire to see the royal couple.
In The Fire Station, William and Kate met children taking part in a storytelling workshop.
William, 35, sat cross-legged on the floor but anxious for her comfort, he said to his wife, due to give birth in April: “You might want a chair.” In another room they watched girls from Dance City showing off acrobatic skills on trapezes.
Kate asked Nicole Coates, 12, how she found out about the troupe.
Nicole said: “Me mam said, ‘Would you like to do that?’ And I was like, ‘Waaah, yes!’ ”
Nicole added: “I’d just like to perform in a circus. I don’t want to work in an office. That’s someone else’s dream. That’s not my dream.”
Later, William and Kate donned hard hats to insert one of the final bolts needed to complete a new £117million bridge over the River Wear.
Tattoos are not unknown in the Royal family. Edward VII and George V were both inked on foreign trips before acceding to the throne.