Colour mandala tattoo and back script

The boats came in late again on Tuesday, all six of them, and Dad stood on the quay counting them the way he counts stitches, lips moving, never trusting the first tally. Mrs Pengelly says the sea has been in a temper since the equinox. I told her the sea has never once been in a temper, only tired, and she gave me the look she keeps for people under thirty.

Dad has been mending the big orange net for three weeks. It hangs off the back of the shed like a sail nobody wanted. He works it round a wooden hoop, knot by knot, so the mesh fans out from the centre in rings, and by the time it is finished it looks less like fishing gear and more like the painted rosettes on the old church door at Hendra. Blue in the middle, then purple, then the red of the buoys, then a ring of yellow that catches the light off the water when he holds it up.

Yesterday he asked me to hold the far end while he tied off, and I said I could not see the pattern from there. He said that was the point of a pattern, you only see it from far enough back. I have been turning that over all day, standing at the window with the kettle going cold.

I am sending you the photograph of the hoop, the one you liked. Tell me whether it still looks like a wheel from your side of the map. I will hold the other end.

Love, Mags