I asked if this works or does it add an element of defiance and make tattooing only more appealing?

There are many social customs that leave me entirely perplexed – rugby, for example, always struck me as terrifying, dirty and pointless when compelled to "play" at school – but tattooing is out there in a league of its own daftness.

Are there some people who are turned on by tattoos ... on themselves or seeing it on another's arms or chest?

We know that ancient Celtic warriors were tattooed in elaborate patterns before going off to fight. Is there a remote cultural echo of this? Soldiers often have their regimental insignia injected into their skin or sometimes a woman they can barely remember meeting. Why is she so often called Tracey? Are there teams of seductive Traceys enticing drunken young men into tattooist studios for a fee?

I do not think I have encountered a middle-aged man who is not full of remorse and great embarrassment at his sense-defying decision decades ago. Yet the tattooing trade seems to flourish in its faintly seedy way. I am told most customers are young women, though presumably not called Tracey. How dumb can you get?

We need a gesture towards tattooing that scourges it out of fashionability and registers it as the mark of fools. Perhaps the Prince of Wales could be tattooed, thus rendering it the opposite of chic.

I do accept our dermis is our own to do with as we please, but what may amuse in a tiddly youthful moment must make most wince for the rest of their lives. It remains a mystery – blending dreadful taste with great pain.

OCCASIONALLY, stories pop up in TheSouthern that defy my sense of our damp but pretty counties being the places I think I know.

The report from Amnesty International that there is a trade in trafficked people – coerced labour, or more bluntly, slaves – is just contrary to my perception of the Borders.
Amnesty say that all ports are likely to be used by these criminal gangs – with Stranraer specified.

Can there really be pockets of oppressed people enduring forced labour, privation and degradation thousands of miles from their homes? Where can they be? Can they be hidden up remote cleuchs or are they locked up in derelict mills in Galashiels or Hawick?

The economics of slavery baffle me. A free person will work far better than a coerced person. Slavery is not just cruel – it is incompetent.

Amnesty say that these poor souls are fearful of the police – partly because the police are rightly to be feared in their countries of origin, but also because the police treat them as the miscreants rather than the traffickers. Officialdom can be obtuse, but are the victims regarded as the offenders?

Is it possible this is all a bit fanciful? My intuition tells me no Borders farmer of factory owner would stoop so low or to be so stupid, yet Amnesty has a noble record of fighting injustice.

When I read of the semi-servitude practiced in past centuries in our terrain it gives me a shudder, but even the back-breaking work of the bondager system was an agreement between a labourer and those who hired him or her. The terms strike us as grim by today's standards, but slavery is quite alien to the Tweed Valley. Am I just being naive?

A LIFE-CONSUMING legal fight has been drawing me down to London regularly recently. I prefer the National Express train from Berwick to any other route south. The plane is expensive and far slower if you count the airport hassles. There was a time I could have driven it, but it is too wearisome in current traffic.

I have developed an entertaining and very informative little ritual. I always treat myself to a meal in the dining car – breakfast, lunch or supper. I wait for the posses of Geordie Labour MPs to get on at Newcastle, Durham or Darlington then I make a point of sitting near them to eavesdrop on their wonderfully indiscreet chat. By their second claret – before York – they are warbling freely. I bury my head in the National Express cuisine – or in a golfing magazine so they will assume I am brain dead.

I offer you a few insights into the exchanges between these very rattled Socialist gravy-train passengers. They think Gordon Brown is a loser. They fear they will all go down with him. They have no candidate to replace him who they think can avert catastrophe. They have little clue how to earn a living after a disastrous General Election.

Since the news of the new by-election in Glenrothes emerged, they wonder aloud if the Fates do not have it in for Gordon Brown. He could keep a distance from the fiasco of losing Glasgow East, but Glenrothes abuts the Prime Ministerial constituency.

Labour MPs used to express moral revulsion at Tories, but David Cameron confounds them. He expresses only candy-floss sentiments and looks cute – not unlike Mr Blair 12 years ago.

By the time the National Express team tidy up our cheese plates and give us our last chocolate, I feel quite encouraged that the Labour Party's private view is so utterly bleak.

I think it may be time for a chunky bet – not on a Conservative victory, but on the size of their majority.