Black line drawing of a traditional style tattoo design showing a scroll banner reading Death before decaf, two roses and a teacup with a skull and crossbones.

Death before decaf banner with roses and teacup

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A black outline drawing of a tattoo design with a ribbon banner reading DEATH, before and DECAF, flanked by two roses on the upper and lower sides. A teacup with a skull and crossbones sits at the bottom, with wisps of steam curling above it. The bold, even linework is shown in solid black on a white background, with no shading and no colour.

Traditional Banner Lettering Rose Teacup Skull Crossbones Steam

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The new area manager arrived at the lorry park café on a Tuesday with a clipboard, a laminated wellbeing policy and the look of a man who had never been woken at four in the morning by a driver wanting a bacon roll. Delia Snape watched him read the menu board twice before he found what he was after.

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"Decaf's on the left, love," she said. "Mind the step by the urn."

By Thursday he had pinned a sign saying the café would serve decaf only after midnight, for the health of the drivers. Delia said nothing. She had kept that urn going through three depot managers, a flood and the winter the bins froze solid, and she knew the drivers would sort it out themselves. Big Kev from the Leeds run reported that the manager had asked for a skinny latte with a shot of something herbal, and Delia told Kev to keep his voice down.

At ten past two on Friday the manager came down from the office in his socks, bleary and wanting a glass of water. He found the whole room waiting. Someone had taped his policy to the hatch. The urn was full and roaring. On the counter sat the old chipped teacup with the skull and crossbones, the one nobody had drunk from since Terry retired, and Delia was pouring black tea into it, bag still in, while the steam rose off it like a flag.

He drank it. He coughed, his eyes ran, and he said it was the strongest thing he had ever tasted. "That's the idea," said Delia, and she dropped his sign into the bin herself.