Y ou wouldn't necessarily think it from the weather, but we're entering the season of beach holidays, drunken barbecues and weddings, activities which all involve the display of flesh to some degree.

And these days where there's flesh on show, there are tattoos to be seen also. So as well as being the season of pink, the Scottish summer is now also the season of ink.

Those of us who spend our Saturday afternoons watching what passes for the beautiful game in these northern climes will be well used to the sight of young men with "sleeves" of tattoos. But for the rest of the population, this great summer unveiling can come as something of a shock. "Wow! Just seen the lawyer next door gardening in a vest and she's got a pentacle the size of a hubcab tattooed on her back. Who knew?"

Traditionally, tattoos were codified adornments reserved for sea dogs and Japanese gangsters. But as they become more popular beyond the world of Popeye and the Yakuza we're asked to view them as somehow celebrating the liberated spirit of the person they adorn. I've seen plenty that look more like vandalism than art and others that look like kids' doodles or shopping lists written in that Wingdings typeface, but each to their own.

But with tattoos can come trouble. Your design of a Buddha sitting on a lotus flower might look great down the pub, but try taking it to Sri Lanka and it'll be a different story, as British tourist Naomi Coleman found out recently when she was deported for having one.

Along with a Ukip party conference knees-up, you'd imagine a US army barracks to be the last bastion of redneck behaviour and have the tattoos to match. But even Uncle Sam is wising up to the effect a misplaced tattoo can have. A recently published document with the snappy title AR 670-1 covers various areas of soldierly appearance and has a lot to say about tattoos. As well as banning any design deemed extremist, indecent, sexist or racist, it also stipulates that no soldier should have tattoos on their head, face, neck, wrists, hands or fingers. So that's the classic Love/Hate cliche consigned to history.

But it doesn't stop there. Soldiers are also banned from having more than four visible tattoos below the elbow or knee and those they do have should be smaller than their hand. "Sleeves" are banned below the elbow and the knee (though shouldn't below-the-knee "sleeves" be called "socks"?).

With typically skewed army logic, AR 670-1 also states that all soldiers who currently fall foul of the new rules have seven days to comply. Eh? They're tattoos. You can't just take them off, even if there is an officer tapping his crayon impatiently as he waits to fill out a "tattoo validation memo" (don't laugh, such a thing now exists).

So if even the US army is sitting up and taking action, it's clear that the rest of you should think before you ink - at least if you want to visit Burma or join the Marines. If not, get yer tats out and enjoy the summer.