Black and grey tattoo of two crossed wrenches with the word dad in script above them, on the ankle, beside a black lace-up shoe.

Crossed wrenches and dad script on ankle

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded tattoo of two crossed wrenches sits on the outer ankle, with the word dad written in a handwritten script above them. The wrenches are rendered in black and grey with soft shading and fine outlines. The ankle fills the right side of the frame against a dark background and a black cut-out lace-up shoe.

Ankle Script Dad Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

"Hand me the nine-sixteenths," Dad said, his head already lost under the bonnet of the Bedford. The engine ticked as it cooled, and the road above us curled up through bracken towards Scarth Gap, a place nobody stopped unless they had to. I found the spanner by feel, the way he'd taught me, its handle worn pale where his grip had rubbed it for thirty years.

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We had been on that pass since six. The radiator hose had split, and he'd wrapped it in an old tea towel and a length of galvanised wire, swearing at the wire in the steady, almost tender way he swore at everything he cared about. Mist rolled off the fell in slow coils. Below us the valley lay like something spilled and forgotten, a few farm lights coming on one by one.

"Right," he said at last, wiping his palms down his trousers. "Try her now." I turned the key. The van coughed, considered its options, then caught. He stood with his arms folded and grinned at the engine as if it had done him a personal favour. I laughed, and he laughed, and for a minute the pass was only a road with a van on it.

He didn't climb back in straight away. He took the two wrenches from the roll-up pouch, the ones with his initials scratched into the shafts, and laid them crossed on the warm metal of the bonnet. Then he picked them up again and handed me the smaller one. Driving down, I kept the window open for the cold, and he sat turning the spanner over in his lap like a man who had learned to say things without saying them. At the bottom, where the tarmac met the first hedge, he pulled in and let the engine idle. Neither of us mentioned the hose. We both knew it would need another look before winter.