Black script reading Life ain't always beautiful but it's a beautiful ride, beside an ornate black cross tattoo on skin.

Cross and script quote on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows a black ink tattoo of an ornate cross made from looped, chain-like lines, with three lines of handwritten script beside it. The script is in black, with varied line weights, and the cross has a bold, outlined look. The composition is close and cropped, with the cross on the left and the words running diagonally across the right of the skin.

Lettering Back Cross Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The Harvest Fair came back to Dunmore Lane with the same rusted generator and two fewer ponies than last year, so you can imagine how the takings are looking. Mrs Okafor's candyfloss van has gone to Lincoln with her nephew, and the big top has a patch on its roof the size of a bedsheet. Still, Dad's old Chairoplane is turning. I greased its chains myself on Sunday, every link, the way he taught us, while the rain came sideways off the car park.

The bank man came round with his clipboard and his polite face. He wanted to know why we keep a ride that loses money, and I told him a ride is not a thing you measure in pounds. He didn't write that down. He wrote the sum instead, and it wasn't a good one.

So here is what I did. I took the cross-shaped sign Dad carved for the gate, the one with the looped chains running around its arms, and I repainted it. Beneath it I put the words he always called out to the children queuing for the swings: life ain't always beautiful, but it's a beautiful ride. Half the town thinks he made that up. He didn't. He copied it off a card taped inside a diner in Ohio, he said, and he liked it so much he kept it.

Opening night is Friday. If you can get leave, come and sit in the third chair. I'll keep the lights on for you and put you on the big wheel with the old fare board. Bring nothing. Just come.

Love, Jo