Colour script lettering reading As Lost As Alice, As Mad As a Hatter in blue, red and black ink on a forearm, with a small red heart.

As lost as Alice lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The photograph shows a tattoo of two lines of flowing script lettering across the arm, reading As Lost As Alice above As Mad As a Hatter. The letters have bold blue and red strokes with black outlines and flourished connecting lines, and a small red heart sits near the upper line. The plain dark background keeps the focus on the lettering, which fills most of the frame.

Lettering Forearm Lettering Script Quote Heart Alice in wonderland

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lock-keeper at Iffley has stopped waving, which you take as a sign the season is turning. The Marjorie Ann sits low with coal and a crate of Seville oranges nobody ordered, and the water under her is the colour of stewed tea. Your uncle Teddy left you the boat and a biscuit tin of tide tables, and tucked under the lid, folded small, is a card in his crooked hand: As lost as Alice, as mad as a hatter. You have unfolded it so often the creases have gone soft as cloth.

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Past Abingdon the river stops matching the chart. Willows lean in with directions nobody asked for, and a towpath that should run on to Culham simply gives out in a bed of nettles. At the bend a girl in a blue coat stands on the bank, a red ribbon knotted at her wrist and a pocket watch held out as if it owes her money. She asks, very politely, whether this is the way to the tea party. You say you would need to consult the tide tables, and she laughs as though you have made a good joke.

You nose the barge into the sedge and help her aboard. She tells you the river has been running uphill since Tuesday and that Teddy has owed her a cup of tea since before decimalisation. You do not argue. You light the stove, the kettle ticks, and you pour into two chipped mugs while the hull knocks softly against the reeds. When you turn round with the milk, the galley is empty except for the watch on the table, ticking backwards, and the tea in her mug still steaming as if she has only just stepped out to look at the weir.