Black block lettering reading BEER GOES HERE across the web of a hand between the thumb and index finger, with coloured tattoos partly visible at the edges.

Beer goes here lettering on hand

Lettering · Hand · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo is the phrase BEER GOES HERE in black, uppercase block lettering that follows the curve of the hand's web. The letters have solid, even outlines and dark fill, with some slight softening of the edges. Other tattoos in colour appear at the top left and right of the frame, and the photograph is taken close up under warm, even light.

Lettering Hand Phrase Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The frost has kept the tractor in the shed since Tuesday, so I've had time to think about the bet Dad made at the Plough. He swore the Cotter boys could never keep a pint on the bar once the lorries came over the cattle grid. Walt Cotter took the wager, then went straight to a parlour in Thorne, where a woman with a cigarette behind her ear put the words across the web of his hand in black capitals.

You'd think it daft, and it was. The letters follow the curve between thumb and finger, so whenever Walt reaches for a glass the message sits exactly where it should. BEER GOES HERE, bold as a hay bale. Dad laughed till he coughed, paid up, and the whole bar thumped Walt on the back until the ink was sore.

What nobody expected was Walt giving up drink for a month after that. The cattle needed feeding at five, the ice on the trough cracked every morning, and he'd sit in the barn with a mug of tea, turning his hand over in the lamplight and reading those words again. Last Sunday he slid a single brown bottle across the kitchen table to Dad and said, "Here's where it goes." Dad opened it, and the two of them drank in the cold kitchen with their coats still on.

Dad says the joke was on Walt, though none of us can work out which of them was the joke. Come up at Christmas if the roads clear. Mum sends her love, and says to bring the good cake tin back this time.

Yours, Pip