Forearm tattoo of the words Diabetic Type 2 Blood B+ in black script, surrounded by soft purple and blue swirls and small red sparkles.

Diabetic Type 2 lettering with swirls on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo reads Diabetic Type 2 Blood B+ across three lines in black script lettering. Behind the text are soft, shaded purple and pale blue swirls, with red and orange starburst sparkles and small dots around the edges. The design is set diagonally across the arm and photographed close up under warm indoor light.

Lettering Forearm Script Swirl Sparkle Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

I keep the chandlery on the north side of Carrick Island, where the ferry comes in twice a week and the gulls have opinions about everything. On the Tuesday after the gale, Mrs Tulloch's grandson came up the hill with a biscuit tin that had washed onto the Ardmore sands. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, was a card written in careful black script across three lines.

Keep reading

The card said: Keep the lamp lit. Tell Ruth the boat is sound. Blood B+ for whoever finds this. Nobody on the island could make sense of it, so I took it to the Reverend's sister, who has taught half of us to read and the other half to lie. She tilted the card toward the window and laughed. "That's a boat name," she said. "Some painter rowed a dinghy called the Blood B+ because he couldn't afford the paint for the proper letters."

We spent the afternoon with the tide tables, the parish register and half a bottle of rum. The painter had rented the old net loft in 1952, and his letters home are still sitting in the Post Office drawer, each one ending with a row of red and orange sparks he drew in place of a signature. Ruth Tulloch, it turned out, was his landlady's daughter. The lamp he meant was the one at the top of the cliff path, which has been dark since the war.

I put the card in my shop window beside the tide times. Ruth came in on Friday with a jar of marmalade and read it without taking off her gloves. She tapped the last line with one finger and said the boat was sound after all. Then she bought a torch, and for once the gulls went quiet.