This is my 40th birthday present from Bobbie.

Apparently I’m quite hard to buy for. Personally, I don’t see it. But nobody wants to buy me records because they somehow think that because I have a lot of them, I won’t appreciate them as a gift. In fact, the opposite is true. I have a lot of records BECAUSE I appreciate them so much.

But I don’t seem to be able to change anyone’s mind on that, so I’ll leave that there.

For my 40th birthday, about which the subject of gift-buying became something of a hand-wringing exercise, one of the things that was mooted was an artwork. Maybe a print by a New Zealand artist. So I started to look around.

Who were the NZ artists I really respected and admired? Well, there’s McCahon, of course, and Ralph Hotere — and I don’t know a kiwi who doesn’t have a soft spot for the work of Dick Frizzell. But the vast majority of NZ art seems to be landscapes and pastels, sails and watercolours. Not really my thing.

And then I realised. I knew who my favourite NZ artist was - it was Otis Frizzell — son of Dick, broadcaster, painter, graffiti artist, NZ hip hop pioneer and tattooist.

I’d always said I’d never get a tattoo unless it was an Otis design, and since that didn’t ever seem likely to happen, I never got one.

But when I was offered art for my 40th, I thought… what a great opportunity. If I could convince Otis (and I had some connections to him that I could use to get in touch), then there’s a chance I could get a true one-off artwork: a tattoo design by one of NZ’s top artists. It would be just mine, special to me — and it would be something I could carry with me the rest of my life. How amazing is that?

To cut a long story short, Otis was happy to do it, once his major exhibition was out of the way, and we talked about the design. I spoke about what’s important to me, how I feel about my NZ roots, my connections to music, the travel that I do — that sort of thing.

And with those things in his head, he set to work.

To explain the design — what Otis came up with is a stylised manaia (mahn-eye-ah) — a sort of bird-like / serpentine Maori spirit guardian and messenger (here are some more traditionally styled bone carving designs). It evokes music through its treble-clef-like shape, and has references to the fish hook in its design, which is symbolic of protection over waters.

It also — best of all — acts as a personalised extension of Otis’s recent Pinstripe Tikis series of works, which are some of my favourite of his paintings.

Bobbie was very happy for this to be her gift to me, and I can’t think of anything more appropriate. It’s deeply personal and permanent. Absolutely right that this should be from my wife.

This is such a great 40th birthday gift. Well worth the wait and really special to me. It’ll be going on my upper arm, if you’re curious, and I’ll be getting it done in New Zealand when I’m there in December. I’m hoping the guys from Illicit or Up-Town will be available to do it. They come with Otis’s recommendation for the job.

I’m so incredibly stoked to have this design. It’s an original artwork — one of a kind by an artist I really respect, and with a whole lot of meaning specific to me embedded within it. I love it to bits, and it will be such an honour to wear this.

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Of course, this is a one-off, and it would be in incredibly poor taste to steal this design and use it yourself. Not only that, I’m reliably informed that it would itch and never heal. Some sort of tapu, I’m told.