Close-up of a lettering tattoo on skin showing the word Diabetic in black script inside a red outlined medical alert star, with the numerals 1 above and below.

Diabetic medical alert star tattoo

Lettering · Mixed · Photo

A close-up photograph of a tattoo showing the word Diabetic in black, flowing script across the centre. A red outline of a six-pointed medical alert star surrounds the word, with a small black mark at the top and a numeral 1 at the bottom. The linework is bold and the lettering is solid black with no visible shading, and the image is framed tightly on the skin.

Lettering Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you, where the lamp reaches. No, the other side, the draught comes under that door. Right. You'll have seen the tin stars nailed up at the cage-house on Crane Level, six points painted red and gone brown with damp. Ivor Pryce cut the first one from a biscuit tin the winter his nephew fell off the landing and lay there grey as ash until the cage came. Nobody in the shift knew who should be hauled up first, so Ivor made a rule and a star for every man, with his name across it in pitch, the letters swinging like a fairground sign.

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The number at the bottom was the order of going up. A one meant first out of the cage, whatever your wage or your temper. Ivor's own star had a three on it, and he complained about that for twenty years. The forked mark at the top was for the doctor's bag, he said, though the doctor himself never once came down the pit. Men took to touching their stars for luck before they stepped on, the way other men touch a chapel doorway.

Then came the night the roof sang and the lamps went out in a line, one after another, like a row of fishermen's lanterns going home. In the black, Ivor's grandson Dai found his way by feel along the rail, counting tin edges under his fingers. He reached the cage with a hand full of stars and called the order out loud, and every man answered to his own number. The one star he could not place belonged to Captain, the old grey pony who hauled tubs on the lower road. Ivor had nailed a tin for him too, out of spite and affection in equal measure, and had painted a one on it. Captain went up first that night, stamping in the cage with his head low, and Dai swore the pony knew his number better than some of the men did.

The tin is still on the cage-house door. You can see the rust has eaten the top of the one, but the red outline holds, and if you put your thumb on it, the metal is warm from the stove. Mind your step going out.