Traditional-style tattoo of a black sheep head with curled black wool, crossed bones and a banner reading Black Sheep, on the forearm.

Black sheep head with banner on forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A sheep's head with a tan face, pink ear and curly black wool is shown in front of two crossed bones. A pale banner across the lower part reads BLACK SHEEP, with smaller lettering reading 3rd and Gen. The outlines are bold and the wool is shaded in grey, with flat colour on the face and small green touches around the bones.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are the one who stopped going to chapel the winter the wool buyers started calling your grandfather a fool. By the time the Saturday dance got going at the Palais on Briggate, the whole family had decided you were the stain on the shearing sheet. Nobody says it to your face. They say it to the aunts, and the aunts say it to the lot of you over the trifle.

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Your cousin Edith finds you by the cloakroom with two glasses of cider and the look of someone who has been sent. She tips her head towards the floor, where the Crowther lads are doing the quickstep as if it were a funeral march. 'Dad says you'll ruin the raffle,' she says. 'Dad says lots of things.' You hand her a glass, and she drinks half of it before she answers.

The band slides into a slow number and the lights go amber. The MC reads out a ticket number, and it is yours, the one for the Christmas ham that nobody else wanted to buy. You walk up through the crowd with every eye on your back, and he hands you a hamper with a bow on it. Someone at the back laughs. You laugh too, because you have spent thirty years being the black sheep, and a hamper is still a hamper.

On the way out you pass your grandfather's old flat cap on its hook by the door. You leave the ham on the table for whoever wants it, and walk home in the rain with the ribbon tucked under your arm.

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