Fine line tattoo of a globe hanging from a hot air balloon above a suitcase, with a small blue aeroplane, on a person's upper back.

Globe balloon and suitcase on upper back

Fine line · Back · Mixed · Photo

A small tattoo shows a world globe with continent outlines, lifted by a hot air balloon and carrying a suitcase with a bow and a few stickers. A dotted flight path curves from the left of the globe, and a tiny blue aeroplane sits over the map. The linework is fine and black, with the blue plane as the only colour accent, and the design is centred on a plain, lightly lit expanse of upper back.

Fine line Back Globe Hot air balloon Aeroplane World map Dotted line Travel

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nan, The colliery has given Dad the Sunday off at last, so I am writing this properly at the kitchen table while the kettle takes its time. The bus to Hartlepool was late again and the driver swore at the wipers, but I have a ticket now, one way, folded inside my good shoes where Mam won't think to look.

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The suitcase is Aunt Ivy's, the brown one with the brass clasps, and I have stuck the labels back on it from her trip to Lisbon in 1961: the heart, the clover, the little key. I tied a yellow ribbon round the handle because the church fête taught me that anything looks braver with a bow. Mr Pryce at chapel says a suitcase only needs a reason to be lifted. I told him the balloon was the reason and he said balloons are for fêtes and weddings, not for girls from Carrick Dene. He has never once looked at the sky.

Mrs Hollis let me trace the coast of Brazil on the schoolroom map last week, and I got it wrong, because the real thing is bigger than the drawing and nobody warned me. There is a dotted line on my map that runs up and over the top of the world, and a little silver aeroplane sitting over Africa as if it has stopped to think about where to go. I have decided I am that aeroplane.

Don't wait up, and don't let Dad sit by the pit gate in the evenings with his cap on his knee. Put the kettle on the morning I'm back, not because I'll be home but so he remembers the sound. The wheel has stopped for the day and all I can hear now is rain on the coal heap. Your loving granddaughter, Margaret, who will see the sea from the other side first.