Asgard in Southampton is right next to a rest/care home. It's slightly disconcerting to see the same colours/fonts on the body piercing sign as on the care home sign on the other side of the driveway. "Knock loudly" it says on the door but I sort of knocked and opened the door and it opens onto a kitchen...

Warwick and Angie greeted us (me and my friend Rachel) and led us upstairs to the studio. Big case full of jewellery -- some really nice niobium rings -- pretty much everything is CBRs and all made on the premises. I want my septum done at 10ga and I want a retainer. Warwick doesn't have one so he goes off to the workshop to make one. Rachel's having her navel pierced and Angie went through the patter about sterile field etc (Rachel will post separately her view of this!). Angie using a freezing spray and Rachel says it hurt more than the pierce.

Warwick returns with the freshly minted U-shaped retainer and autoclaves it. It'll be about half an hour so we go downstairs to the lounge where Warwick tries to make us coffee in between handling phone calls and two navel jewellery changes. The lounge is not a sight for animal rights folks: the walls are lined with stuffed birds and guns and shooting trophies feature largely... A thin blonde called Naomi, an aerobics instructor, comes in and gets her "belly button" pierced... She's not too impressed with our tongue pierces etc etc poor girl... Warwick did five navels before lunch and then lost count :-) We finally get the coffee and fend off the attentions of Kim the puppy but not until she'd already jumped on my groin and clawed at my nipple ring which was already playing up... do dogs have piercing radar or what????

Autoclave's done so back upstairs. Warwick checks the shape of my nose and then clamps and pierces. Did it hurt? Er, no, actually and I was kinda disappointed... my eyes didn't even water. Well, OK, just a bit as he put the retainer in.

Before the pierce, he had warned me that it's hard to get the septum level but said that he will re-pierce (f.o.c. I guess) if I'm not happy.

Then we went back downstairs and chatted to Warwick for about half an hour about his business and stuff. He's a nice friendly guy but the work-from-home aspect of the studio is a little unnerving (for me, at least). As we leave he shakes our hands and says it's nice to pierce people who are into it rather than just a fashion thing. Ahhhh.... :-)

After, we went out for a chinese and then saw a movie and, I'm afraid, I kept fiddling with the retainer... it feels really strange and, no, it isn't straight but it's difficult to tell how crooked it is yet. It *looks* pretty uneven but we'll see...