Colour tattoo of a feather with the words Strength lies within in black script, across the calf, in blue, orange and grey shading.

Feather with script lettering on a calf

Lettering · Calf · Colour · Photo

A large feather runs up the lower leg, with its upper half shaded in blue and teal and its lower half in warm orange and yellow. The words Strength lies within are written in black script across the feather's shaft, with fine grey shading and dark outlines defining the barbs. The photograph is taken straight on against a pale blue paper covering, with the calf filling most of the frame.

Lettering Calf Feather Script Lettering Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the lock at Harcombe has been against us three days running, so Mam and I are tied up below the mill with the cabin stove going and the kettle never off. You asked in your last what I do when the water runs fast and the boat wants to go sideways. The honest answer is that I stop talking to myself and count the rivets on the cabin roof instead, which is a poor sort of wisdom but it works.

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Mam found a feather on the towpath yesterday, grey on one side and a kingfisher blue along the top where the light caught it. She wedged it in the tin by the tiller, under the brass plate with the bent nail. I asked her what it was for. She said it was for nothing, it was just a feather, and then she told me what her own gran used to say when the floods came into the cabins: a feather can't be broken by the wind it flies into, only by the wind that comes at it from behind. I have not worked out what she meant, and I think she has forgotten half of it herself.

Mr Pryce came down this morning in his green waders and said the gates will open on Thursday if the level drops another hand's breadth. He thinks I should go ahead alone with the tow rope and leave Mam ashore with the dog. I told him Mam has never once been left behind by a lock, and she is not starting now.

So here is the arrangement. I am keeping this letter in the tin with the feather, and when you come down to meet us at Stanwell in the spring you can have both. Mind the wind off the water. Mam sends her love and says the stove is to be lit on the left hand side only, because the right has a crack. When the gates swing open I will stand at the bow with the blue end pointing upstream, and we will go through.