Black blackwork tattoo of a crown above a triangle containing the letters FOB, with drip-style edges, on the forearm.

Crown and triangle lettering on forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A bold black tattoo of a crown above an upward-pointing triangle, with the letters FOB set inside the triangle. The linework is solid and heavy, with rough, drip-like edges on the letters and triangle. The design is in black ink only, centred on a pale section of forearm against a white, textured background.

Blackwork Lettering Forearm Crown Triangle Letter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dennis Okafor had painted the sign over the Crown Inn's harbour door for eleven winters, and every one of them the rain had run into the letters before he finished. He hung off the planks with a brush between his teeth, the wind shoving grit against his collar, while below him the tide turned over the slipway with a sound like someone clearing their throat.

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The landlady, Mrs Pryce, had asked for something new. Her husband had painted FOB on that board in 1958, for the boat he lost off Pendle Point, Faithful Old Bess, and she wanted the initials kept clean, without the drips that had crept into them over the decades. Dennis said he would try. He mixed black enamel thick enough to hold a line and drew the triangle freehand, point up, the way the old warning boards used to stand on the quay.

Halfway through the crown, a gust took the ladder sideways and he had to grab the rail. The brush slid, and a fat bead of black ran down past the O and pooled at the foot of the B. He almost swore. Then he looked at it properly and laughed, because the drip made the letters look as though they had weathered there for sixty years, the way the real ones had.

When he came down at dusk, Mrs Pryce was waiting at the bottom with her coat buttoned to the neck. She looked up at the board for a long time. "Leave it," she said. "Bess always did leave a mark."