Black and grey tattoo of a standing giraffe with a dotted spot pattern, on the side of an ankle.

Giraffe tattoo on an ankle

Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small giraffe stands in side profile, facing right, with its head raised and tail hanging down. The outline is dark and even, and the coat is filled with irregular dark spots that give a stippled texture. The tattoo is centred on a pale ankle against a dark background, and the image is in black and grey.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, the band's having a cup of tea and I've got a tale that takes longer than a foxtrot. This is about the giraffe who came to the Marine Ballroom in the summer of 1936, the year the travelling menagerie ran out of money in Margate and left her behind with a debt and a bad cough.

Keep reading

Her name was Tilly, and nobody could tell you why. Old Walter Pike, who owned the hall, took her on because the carpet men wouldn't come past the doors unless there was something to gawp at. So every Saturday she stood at the edge of the floor with her long neck bent over the dancers like a question mark, watching the couples turn under the chandeliers with their hands held just so.

Here is the thing you won't believe. Tilly could see the sea from up there. Over the balcony rail, over the bandstand, through the high back windows to the water going grey at dusk. Nobody else in the hall could, not with their feet on the boards and their eyes on their partners. Walter's girl, Ada, said the giraffe was lonely. I said she was simply tall. Ada married a lad from the lifeboat in the end, and every time he came home on leave he'd stand under Tilly's chin and tell her the weather out past the pier, and she'd lower her head to hear every word.

Then the great storm of '38 came in, and the power went out in the middle of the Lancers. The whole hall went black, and somebody screamed for a lamp. Tilly didn't wait for one. She pushed her head out through the cracked top window and saw the lifeboat crew coming up the promenade with a stretcher, and she bellowed, which is not a sound a giraffe is meant to make. They came in through the front like the tide. So if anyone ever asks what a dance hall needs with a giraffe, you tell them which of us was looking the right way.

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