Two forearm tattoos in black and grey, a guillotine on the left arm with the words KEEP YOUR CHIN UP and a noose on a gallows on the right arm with the words HANG IN THERE.

Guillotine and gallows on two forearms

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are shown side by side, each with a black and grey illustrated tattoo. The left arm has a guillotine with the words KEEP YOUR CHIN UP beneath it, and the right arm has a noose hanging from a gallows beam with the words HANG IN THERE beneath it. The linework is clean and outlined, with grey shading on the wooden frames and the blade.

Forearm Text Lettering

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The drop beam came down on a wet Tuesday, the same week the council decided Hollin Gaol was better suited to hens. Ted Parry and I wrestled it off its iron brackets while the governor stood in the gatehouse holding his hat, as though the timber might make a run for it.

Keep reading

I had served my time at Brierley's joinery, so when the county offered the old frames for scrap at a shilling a foot, I took them. Mrs Abbott at the Co-op asked after my mother's knee and never once after my work. I didn't mind. A man can build a sound thing and let the town think what it likes, and the oak, once I had sanded it back, had a grain as straight as a rule.

Margaret said I was mad to bring it home. I said it was for the shed. She said that was what worried her. Then one Saturday Ted's boy came round with a tin of Indian ink and a bottle of cheap whisky, and asked if I could knock up a joke for the summer fete, something for the tombola. I said I would sooner spell it out. So I wrote two lines in plain capitals on the back of a seed packet, one about the blade and one about the rope, and the lad read them twice and laughed until he had to sit down on the step.

He folded the packet into his shirt pocket and asked which one I thought was the better advice. I told him the rope was for when the blade was not on offer, and he nodded as if I had given him a ticket for the raffle. Margaret kept the shed door open all that week so the light could get at the wood.