Men and women in the West wear tattoos now, but it seems to me that they wear them differently. If a man has a tattoo it is there for the world to see on his arm, occasionally on his leg. However, women tend to hide their tattoos about their bodies so that they may be revealed whenever they would like to show them. One favourite position is at the base of the spine.

The base of the spine is normally covered, but a short top may be worn to reveal it and blouses and cardigans often ride up, when someone bends down, giving a glimpse of the tattoo at the base of the spine. It has become very popular to have a tribal or Oriental design put there.

Concealed tattoos like this and on other parts of the body like the upper thigh or upper chest are very sensual. The only ones who know of them are the people who are permitted to go there. It is like a mutual secret between close friends and lovers.

Besides the tribal designs and Oriental designs, women often have something written in an Oriental language at the base of their spines. The Chinese, Japanese or Thai characters are unreadable to most people in the West, so again, it becomes a personal message.

Not many women put their boyfriend's name on their arm, like men do with their girlfriend's names, but I know a couple of women who have had their boyfriend's names tattooed on the bottom of their back in Chinese or Japanese characters. If you change boyfriend's, you can always say it means 'good luck' and there are just two billion people who would know the truth.

In addition to these designs, it is also fairly common to see birds, flowers and vines tattooed at the base of the spine. Birds and flowers are very pretty and colourful, but the vine is an ancient emblem of love in the sense of growing together.

The vine is a common symbol on Welsh love spoons too. The Welsh love spoon was given by a man to the woman he loved as a token of his sincerity. Many of the symbols used in tattooing are also to be found on Welsh love spoons and the tradition of giving them predates Captain Cook's rediscovery of tattooing on Samoa in the mid-Eighteenth century.

Another common design for lower back tattoos is the dragon (and dragonfly, for some reason). The dragon is also an Oriental and Celtic mythical animal - the red dragon appears on the Welsh flag, but it is an animal popular in most European countries as well.

There are no rules about which tattoo ought to go where, but the lower back is quite a large area, so it lends itself to a bigger tattoo. A bird or a dragon with outstretched wings looks pretty, as does a starscape, but the most well-liked is still the stylised image of a vine growing in, through and around itself.

The Celtic symbolism of the vine was love, fertility and opportunity, but the vine is used as a symbol in both the Old and the New Testaments. In the Old Testament, it seems to refer usually to Israel and in the New one to Jesus.