Camera lens tattoo on an inner arm

The lens came back from the repairers in Doncaster wrapped in a copy of the Yorkshire Post, and I have spent the whole afternoon turning it over on the kitchen table like a stone from the beck. Mr Fairclough says the glass is clean now, that the fungus in the back element was the trouble all along, and that he will not charge me because I was the one who sat up with his boy through the fever winter. I told him it was your camera and your debt, not mine, and he laughed and said you always did owe everybody something.

The wheel was turning when I walked up to the top road this morning to see whether the wagons were coming down. The light was low and copper over the spoil heaps, and I thought of the shutter you used to hold open for a full minute while you told me to keep still. Nobody in this village has stood that still since. I put the lens to my eye and the whole valley went round in a ring of brown and grey, with a flush of orange where the sun caught the centre, like oil on the puddles outside the baths.

I have enclosed the last frame you left in the back of the drawer, the one of the colliery band in their uniforms. It came out grey and soft, the way you said it would if the glass was dirty. Now I can see it properly. You were right about the men's faces. I wish you would come home for the Gala so I can show you.

Write soon. Mam says the heating oil is dear, and Sarah's baby has your nose.

Love, Nell