Following on from the last post – here is another extract from my chat with Reg.

Are there any strategies you have used to lessen the impact of tattoos on others?

Reg: The answer is yes, quite deliberately.  So, I wear shirts that are cut with a longer than normal sleeve, to make sure that they hang over my wrists.  I don’t happen to be wearing one today, but generally speaking that’s what I do.  And I wear cufflinks that are quite bright, so that if my sleeves roll up and somebody catches a glimpse of color, then they most of the time just think it’s a cufflink.  And that’s a fact.  That’s deflective state.  That’s a technique that works.

James: And that works?

Reg: Yeah.  If I do this and it’s just a flash thing, ‘Oh, he’s probably wearing cufflinks.’  Nobody goes, ‘Oh, my God, he’s got tattoos.’  And it works.  And that’s deliberately employed on occasion around certain board tables.  There’s other things that I do.  It’s great connotations.  I sit at one desk with my sleeves rolled up, so I have tattoos visible on both arms, and it was just, that didn’t mean that I was a criminal or an idiot.  They linked it to a creative mindset, so I’m known for thinking quite laterally.  That comes naturally, but I did read a couple of books on it.   I’m known for being musical and started out quite pedestrian when I was younger in the bank, contributing cartoons and drawings and newsletters and articles to social newsletters that the bank has.  I still do that.  I still draw a cartoon every week.  So the perception, there, is that I’m just artistic and creative and we always cut those people a little bit of slack for being eccentric and I get away with it from that perspective.

James: So, do you have a label as someone who’s quirky, creative, eccentric?  Is that?

Reg: A little bit, yeah.

James: In the nice sense, not the bad sense.

Reg: Yeah.  I quite often get calls from people that say, ‘Look, I just need to throw something at a wall and can you give me your opinion on this.’  Or, ‘Can we just sit around a table and just throw this in the air and see what happens?’  And I get called into a lot of sessions for that.

James: But that’s quite cool.

Reg: That’s very good.  It makes my job quite interesting.  I’m very proud of that.

Tune in the third and final post on this most interesting topic!

All my best,

James

James Evangelidis

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Tagged as: piercings, Reg, tattoos