Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Compass, anchor and compass rose design
Black and grey · Flash
The drawing shows a vintage-style compass overlapping an anchor, with a compass rose below and a faint circle behind it. Fine black linework outlines the forms, with hatching and solid black areas creating shadow on the compass needle, anchor and rose points. The design is in black ink on a cream background and is centred on the page.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Ada,
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The fair pulled into Harrogate on Tuesday, the same field by the gasworks where Dad first set up the Waltzer in 1979, and the lad from the council made us shift the cake stall twice before he was satisfied. You asked what became of the brass compass, so here is the answer. It's in the bottom drawer of the caravan, under the anchor chain Dad swore he'd never sell.
He won the compass off a man in Bridlington at a card table, I think, though he told it three different ways depending on who was buying the chips. What he never lied about was the needle. It sticks north-north-east when the weather turns, and he'd tap the glass and say the sea was coming in, which it never did, not for sixty miles.
Last Thursday the generator packed in halfway through the evening and the lights went out over the whole dodgems row. Children were crying, the candyfloss man was shouting, and I stood in the dark with the torch in one hand and the compass in the other, trying to work out which way the car park lay. The needle swung, shivered and settled, steady as anything. I followed it past the tombola and out to the van.
I'm keeping the compass. Come up at the weekend and I'll show you where the needle points now.
Love, Mum
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