Colour tattoo of Eeyore the donkey hanging upside down from a red balloon on the upper back, in a neo-traditional style.

Eeyore hanging from a red balloon on upper back

Neo-trad · Back · Mixed · Photo

A grey cartoon donkey with a pink bow hangs upside down by a string tied to a red balloon. The bold black outlines and smooth shading on the balloon and donkey give the piece a dimensional look. The design sits centrally on the upper back, with the balloon near the nape of the neck and the donkey's feet and a soft grey shadow below.

Neo-trad Back Balloon Bow String Cartoon character

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at Haddow Sands ever asked the donkey why he hung upside down. They asked whether the balloon would last the afternoon, whether the bow was straight, and whether he minded children pulling his ears. Thistle minded all of it, but he minded the bow most, because Mrs Pell had tied it on in April and it had never once sat straight since.

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The balloon came from Dinah Riordan's cart on the pier, and it was paid for with a penny that belonged to nobody in particular. The string was looped twice round his back legs by a boy called Alfie, who believed any donkey could be made to fly if you tied him to something lighter than air. Thistle did not fly. He was only lifted, turned over, and left to look at the sea from the wrong way up, where the water sat on top like a blue lid and the gulls came down through it.

By the third week the view had begun to make sense. Upside down, the pier looked like a bridge hanging from the sky, and the people walking along it had their heads in the wrong place, which seemed only fair. When Dinah came back at dusk to unhook him, she found him still grinning the way donkeys do when they have decided something.

'Leave me up a while longer,' he said. Donkeys are not meant to talk, but Dinah had never been one for rules, so she sat down on the wet step to hear him out. The red balloon tugged gently at the sky above the harbour, as if it wanted a look at the view too.