Pencil sketch of the words Fresh and Foolish in flowing script lettering with an ampersand, drawn on white paper resting on a wooden table.

Fresh and Foolish script lettering sketch

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of the phrase Fresh and Foolish set in large, looping script lettering with a decorative ampersand. The strokes are sketched with soft grey graphite, with light shading beneath the letters and swirling tails extending across the page. The design fills most of the sheet, photographed at a slight angle on a wooden surface.

Lettering Script Lettering Ampersand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the sketch tucked inside a seed catalogue, folded twice where the damp has got into the corner, and you spend the better part of the morning on your knees in the bean rows trying to decide whether it is a joke. Your aunt Maud drew it in pencil on the back of a nursery invoice from Deal. The loops are hers, you would know them anywhere, the tails running off the edge of the paper like something trying to get out of a hedge.

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Fresh and Foolish, she called the pair of them, the two cousins who ran the stall by the harbour, Edie with her tomatoes and Ruth with her opinions. Nobody in the village could agree on which was which. The sign was meant for the gate, and Maud spent a whole winter with a sable brush and a tin of green enamel, correcting the ampersand until it looked like a swan with its neck bent back to preen.

You stand up too quickly, the blood rushes, and you read the words aloud to the runner beans, which have been the only audience the garden has offered since the funeral. Fresh. Foolish. The shading under the letters is smudged where her thumb rested, and you can picture her doing it, humming the hymn she always got wrong, not caring that the grey came off on her cardigan.

You carry the sketch in to the kitchen and prop it against the kettle. Under the lowest tail of the F, in pencil so faint you nearly miss it, she has written a date and a single word: again.