EVEN though the Intaskin tattoo parlour was free of customers, there was a busyness that still played trickery on the senses.

I found my toes tapping along to the fifties music playing from a jukebox, and was distracted by the Marilyn Monroe wallpaper and pictures of pin-ups with perfectly coiffed hair.

Rod Martin, who owns the parlour in Coggeshall Road in Braintree, opposite the White Hart, has a clear passion for the fabulous fifties, and it shows in his work.

Mr Martin, 49, recalled where his love for the Rockabilly scene came from.

“I have been on the scene since I was four years old and actually started tattooing when I was 18.

“My parents go me into tattooing, they were very into rock and roll and my dad had tattoos.

“I used to draw on him all the time when I was little.

“It’s in my genes, literally, from my ankles up.” He explained he sported a fifties pin-up girl that went all the way up his leg.

After getting his first tattoo, his love for ink continued to grow.

He has now lost count of the number he has, and the self-taught artist admits to doodling on himself whenever he gets bored.

After giving me a tour of the studio, which was plastered with various drawings and designs of swallows, hearts and roses, he explained why the recurring theme was so popular.

He said: “I went to Atlanta in the late nineties for a holiday and ended up staying for a few months, as I got offered work doing landscape gardening.

“I fell in love with the place because it’s a culture set around the Rockabilly scene.

“Even though I wasn’t there for very long I’m homesick for it.”

Although Mr Martin does not only rave about the fifties. He is also a big fan of cosmetic cover-ups.

He spends hours working on individual hairs in eyebrows, covering birthmarks and even lightening the skin on burn scars.

He said: “I tattoo eyebrows hair by hair, so about 300 hairs. It’s painful but I want to take the time to do it.

“Another woman wanted her birthmark on her neck covered up, and the hug I got from her after it was finished, it was just amazing. She was so thankful, and that’s why I love doing this.”

The shop has been open for almost a year, but it was not an easy start up.

Mr Martin fell ill after his trip to America and short time working in security.

One of his nerves in his brain was tricking him into thinking pain was in his legs.

He said: “It got so bad I couldn’t walk and had to be in a wheelchair- It’s incurable.

“I thought what on Earth I could do with my time after that, so I got back into tattooing and re-trained myself.”

We had a rather heated discussion about programmes such as Channel 4’s Tattoo Fixers, as Mr Martin said many people do not realise how long the skill takes to master.

He said: “People think it’s easy to just get a tattoo covered up with another tattoo, it’s not like that.

“It has to be designed specifically around what you already have, that programme drives me crazy.

“I spent years watching artists tattoo me and I used to practice on myself and my friends.

“You learn through hard graft and sacrifice. A proper tattoo artist will always sacrifice his own legs.”