Black script tattoo reading Be the change, with small floral flourishes at each end, on the top of a foot.

Be the change script on a foot

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A fine black script reads Be the change across the top of a foot, with a small curled floral flourish at each end of the phrase. The linework is thin and even, and the ink is solid black with no shading. The photo is taken at a slight angle with the foot filling the frame, and a dark chair and red nail polish appear in the background.

Fine line Lettering Other Script Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The sign finally went up over the door of the Ferrier Road reading room on Tuesday, and I am writing to tell you the letters came out crooked first time because of me, before old Mr Bellamy set them straight. You will remember he taught me the brush the summer you left for Leeds, and he never once let me dip it in black without wiping the bristles on a rag, so each stroke came out thin as a hair. He said a sentence wants to be read in a single breath, and the curl at the start of the line is only there so the eye knows where to begin.

We had a frost that week, the kind that furs the windows from the inside, and I painted in the back room with the stove door open and my fingers going numb. The words were the ones the Women's Institute chose after the flood, Be the change, and Mrs Hollis kept asking whether it was too bold for a village hall. I told her the lettering was small enough to be modest and the flourishes at either end would hold it up like a pair of hands. She said that sounded like something a vicar would say, and she was right.

On the last morning I found Bellamy had repainted the leaves on my second flourish in the night, without a word, because mine had gone soft and lost their curl in the damp. I was cross at first. Then I turned the board over and saw he had written my initials in pencil beside his own, as if we were one hand.

The sign is up now. Come and see it when you're home for Christmas. It reads properly from the lane.

Love, Nell