Black and grey realism tattoo on the upper back showing a pocket compass, a chain and the script words To Die Would Be An Awfully Big Adventure.

Compass and quote lettering on a shoulder blade

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo combines shaded realism with script lettering reading To Die Would Be An Awfully Big Adventure. A pocket compass with a detailed rose and a hanging chain sit beneath and beside the words, with soft grey shading behind them. The image is a close shot of skin on the upper back, with the design filling most of the frame in black and grey ink.

Realism Lettering Back Compass Chain Script Quote Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Grandad kept the compass in his waistcoat pocket, its brass lid worn as smooth as a conker. In late August we went up the orchard with wicker baskets, and he stopped at every tree to tap a branch and listen, the way other men check an engine.

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"You'll not get a true north in here," he said, when I complained the ladder wobbled. He flipped the lid and the needle shivered, then swung hard toward the old Bramley at the far hedge. "Apples pull it round. Always have." I thought he was teasing me, and mostly he was. "To die would be an awfully big adventure, Nell," he said, nodding at the ladder, "but I'd rather you came down the sensible way."

The last Saturday he didn't come up. Mum said his chest was bad and he was resting in the front room with the wireless on. I took the baskets alone, and at the gate I opened the compass to see if the needle would behave. It pointed straight back up the rows, not at the lane or the road or the sea, but at the Bramley.

I climbed carefully, picked the highest apples I could reach, and when I came down I found the compass lying open on the bottom rung of the ladder, where he must have left it that morning. I didn't know how he'd managed the ladder, or the orchard, or whatever else. I pocketed it anyway, and walked home the long way round the rows.