Colour floral tattoo with daffodils and rose

The hall committee finally said yes to the wall. Mr Okafor from the chip shop found me a ladder and a tin of primer that smells of pear drops, and I have been up it every evening this week with the radio on. You'd laugh. I've painted the same pink gerbera four times because the first three looked like someone's bad idea of a jelly sweet. The fourth one, I think, is right. It sits low on the brickwork where the damp has come through, and I used a wash of grey to shade the petals so it looks like it's been left out in the rain.

The daffodils were easy. Mum always said you can't kill a daffodil, and I think she meant it as a comfort, the way she meant most things. I put them in front of the blue splashes, the ones I flicked on from an old toothbrush, and they came up brighter than I expected. Mrs Pryce stopped on the pavement yesterday with her shopping and asked who had made them. I said nobody in particular. She said they looked like they were about to start talking.

The rose is the one I can't get right. Every time I reach the bottom of the wall I stop, because it's the colour of Dad's old allotment coat, the one he hung on the back of the kitchen door, where the light came in sideways in the mornings. I keep thinking the shadow under the petals should be darker than it is, and I keep not touching it.

Anyway, the fair is Saturday. Come up if you can. Bring the good scissors, the ones you hid from me in 1979. I want you to see it before the council decides it's graffiti.

Love, Maureen