White chalk line drawing of an anchor with a looping ampersand-style swirl on a black chalkboard background.

Anchor with ampersand design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A single-line chalk drawing of an anchor, with a vertical shaft topped by a small ring and a crossbar. A looping ampersand-style swirl sits across the upper part of the shaft, and curved flukes curve out at the base. The image is white linework on a dark textured background, with no shading and no colour.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The chalk was the last thing Dolly kept from the Marigold. Half a stick, worn to a nub, rolling about the bottom of my sea bag while the ferry crossed the Solent. I had meant to throw it out at Portsmouth. Instead I found myself on the quay at dusk, drawing on the slate board outside the Anchor Inn, the way Dolly used to draw the tide tables for the crew who couldn't read them.

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The anchor came first, a plain shaft with its ring and its crossbar, the flukes curling out at the bottom like a pair of arms that had given up on holding anything. Then the ampersand. Dolly always said an ampersand was just a sailor's knot that had learned to show off, two loops pulled tight around the same line. She would have laughed at me for getting the top loop too small. I kept going anyway, lifting the chalk only once, the way she taught me, so the line never broke.

When the board was full I stood back and a woman came out with a tray of glasses, looked at the drawing, and asked whose wedding it was. I said it was nobody's yet. She told me the lads from the Marigold had booked the back room for Saturday, that Dolly's granddaughter was marrying the harbourmaster's boy, and that they had been looking for something to put on the board that wasn't a bloody great heart.

I wiped my hands on my trousers, tucked the nub of chalk into my pocket, and went in to ask for a pint and a seat near the window.

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