Black and grey tattoo on the inner wrist showing a grey caduceus with wings beside the words type one and the symbols I, greater than, caret and v in a simple lettering style.

Caduceus and type one lettering on a wrist

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small tattoo on the inner wrist. A grey caduceus, a staff with coiled snakes and wings, sits at the left, beside the words type one in a simple sans-serif lettering with the symbols greater than, caret and v beneath. The shading is soft and even, the linework is clean, and the tattoo fills the centre of the frame against plain skin.

Lettering Other Staff Snake Wing Text Arrow Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The slate by the proving cupboard had belonged to Mrs Okafor for twenty years, and nobody at Hallam Street had ever wiped the arrows off it. Up, down, straight across. I learned to read them before I learned to knead, the way other children learn their times tables. At quarter to four she came in from the flat above the chemist, tied her apron twice round, and drew a fresh line beside the old ones, tapping the chalk against her teeth while she thought.

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Across the road the pharmacy sign hummed, a green cross and a staff with two snakes wound round it, and its glow fell on the flour sacks like weak sunlight. I asked her once what the arrows meant. She said the dough would tell you where it was going if you were honest enough to write it down. Up meant the yeast was waking too fast and needed knocking back. Down meant it was tired and wanted warmth. Straight across meant you were lucky, and you said nothing about it in case luck was listening.

This morning the line pointed the wrong way, a slant that dipped and kept dipping. I stood with my hands floured to the wrist and wanted to shout for her, but she was in hospital on the coast road, and the bakery was mine until seven. So I did what she would have done. I set the tins in the warmest corner, pulled the cloth over, chalked a v beside the time, and waited with the radio low, counting minutes the way she had taught me.

By half past six the dough had found its height, pale and bubbled like a sea at slack tide. I drew a short arrow pointing right and left it on the slate for her to see. When the first loaves came out brown and split along their seams, I cut the heel off one and ate it standing up, still warm, and felt the day settle into a shape I could read.