Forever 18 script on the lower abdomen

You'll laugh when you hear what Stan did with the Palais sign. Mr Hollis wanted the lettering freshened before the Whitsun dance, and Stan, who has never once in forty years painted a straight line without a cigarette in his mouth, asked me to hold the ladder. "Forever 18," he said, dipping his brush into a tin of black enamel no bigger than a thimble. "Let the council argue with that." The door girls had been turning away anyone who looked a day older than their cards said, and Mr Hollis thought a bit of cheek on the fascia would keep the queue cheerful.

I held the ladder while he worked. He did the capitals first, long swooping strokes that lifted up at the F and came down heavy on the R, then fine hairlines around every letter so they looked like they were lifting off the board. At each end he painted a small butterfly, one on the left, one on the right, wings no wider than my palm. I asked him why butterflies. He wiped his hands on his overalls and said a butterfly never has to explain its age, it just keeps turning up in a new colour every summer.

The sign came down in 1971 when the Palais became a bingo hall, and Mr Hollis carted the board home to his shed. Last Tuesday I went round to see him about the old dance-card photographs, and there it was, leaning against the workbench under a sheet of sacking. The grime had settled into the grain, but the butterflies were still there, and so was the word, as bold as the morning Stan finished it.

Do come up for the reunion. I'll bring the board if you promise not to make me hold the ladder again.

Love, Pearl