Black and grey floral scrollwork and script lettering on a person's hip and thigh, photographed lying on a white bed.

Floral scroll and script on hip and thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A person lies on a white bed, showing a tattoo of ornate floral scrollwork across the hip and side, with a sprig of leaves and flowers in fine outline. Script lettering runs down the side and along the outer thigh, alongside a few dark star shapes. The ink is black and grey, with some shading in the scrollwork, and the composition is a close, soft-focus crop of the torso and leg.

Botanical Lettering Thigh Other Floral Scroll Flower Leaves Script Lettering Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Come closer, you lot, the fire's going out and I've got the rest of Saturday to tell. The Starlight Ballroom on Marwick Pier had a sign painter named Cyril Dunn who came up from Leeds with one brush and a tin of black enamel. Every Friday he climbed the iron balcony with his ladder and his sketches of ivy, and on the rail he painted curls so fine you'd swear they grew there.

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The bandleader, Ada Frome, had a voice like a tram bell and wanted the edges of the dance floor lettered with the names of every tune played there. So Cyril wrote them in a slanting hand, looping the capitals, and when the paint ran short he filled the gaps with five-pointed stars cut from an old biscuit tin lid. Nobody could read a whole line unless they stood still, and nobody ever stood still at the Starlight.

One February the pier caught fire and the balcony burned to black lacework. Cyril went up anyway with a bucket of spirit and a spool of wire, and he traced the scorched ivy back into the iron, leaf by leaf, until the rail looked drawn in ink. Ada stood below in her coat, counting the stars he'd saved from the blaze.

The last thing I know is this: the first dancers back that spring were told to look up, not down, and every one of them swore the ceiling had grown a garden overnight. Cyril never claimed the work. He said the ivy had only been waiting for someone to notice it. Then he caught the morning train back to Leeds, and the band played his favourite waltz twice over for the lights.