Black line drawing of a hand-lettered quote reading "But I crumble completely when you cry." in a lettering style, with broken, crumbling letterforms, on a white background.

Hand-lettered quote in black line

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows the words "BUT I CRUMBLE COMPLETELY WHEN YOU CRY." arranged over several lines in uneven, hand-drawn capital letters. The word CRUMBLE has broken, flaking edges, and the rest of the lettering is drawn with clean, thick black outlines. The design is in black ink on a plain white background with no shading or colour.

Lettering Quote Text Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Co-op window had flaked again by the time Ada Pell came in with her ledger, and I told her what my father told every customer: paint has no more memory than weather. She didn't laugh. She set a tin of gold size between the bread knives and asked if I could letter a card for the bakery window, the line she had copied out of a library book with her thumbnail still pressed under it.

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I said yes before she told me the words. Wenlow in 1957 had one picture house, two chapels and a sign-writer who still used sable brushes, so I was the obvious man. Ada read the words off the page: But I crumble completely when you cry. It seemed a strange thing for a baker to want in her window, but a baker in a small town puts up whatever keeps the customers coming back, and I didn't ask.

I drew the letters in black on white card, thick and uneven the way the old men on Castle Street did it. When I came to CRUMBLE I broke the edges with a dry stipple so the letters looked like shortbread left out on a hot day. Ada stood at my shoulder and said nothing. Her husband Tom had been at the Hartlepool yard since the spring, and the paint on her own shop sign had started to lift that same month, which she insisted was only damp.

On the Saturday of the Whitsun fair Tom came up Castle Street with his cap in his hand. He stopped at the window, read the card twice, and then pushed the door so hard the bell came off its nail. Ada was crying behind the counter. He picked the bell up, hung it back, and bought a loaf, and they walked out together with crumbs down the front of their coats. I could see them through the glass for a long time after I should have gone home.