Red line drawing on tracing paper of a compass, swallow, rose and feather with banners reading Never Forget and Where you're from, in a traditional style.

Compass, swallow and rose stencil

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A red line drawing on tracing paper shows a compass with a swallow perched on its left side, a feather above, and a rose on the right. A banner reading Never Forget arches across the top, and a second banner reading Where you're from sits along the bottom. The bold outlines are even and the composition is centred and symmetrical, with no shading.

Traditional Compass Swallow Rose Feather Banner Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The wagons pulled out of Ashford before light and I have been sat on the back step of the caravan ever since, watching the swallows work the field gates. You'll laugh, but twelve of them came back the same morning we left, skimming over the hop bines as if they'd been told the fair was moving on and wanted to see us off. Mam would have called it bad luck. Dad would have said nothing and whistled.

Grandad's compass is still in my coat pocket. You remember the brass one with the cracked glass, the needle that always swung north-east when we were down at the coast? I finally took it to the man in Maidstone who mends the rides. He opened the back, held it to the lamp, and said the needle was fine, it was only us who kept turning round. I didn't know what to say to that, so I paid him in coppers and bought pasties.

The banner over the dodgems still says what Nan had painted on it in 1962: Never Forget. The lad who does the lettering wanted to change it to something about the new Waltzers, and I told him no. Underneath, the other one, Where You're From, is peeling at the corner where the rain gets in. I keep meaning to fix it before the Lincoln run.

Come home at Christmas if you can. Bring the dog. I'll leave the caravan door open for the swallows, though they'll have gone south by then, and I'll pretend I don't mind.

Love, Jo