Traditional style heart tattoo with a banner reading 'It takes strength to be gentle and kind', surrounded by green leaves, on the back of a neck.

Heart and banner with quote on the back of neck

Traditional · Neck · Colour · Photo

A red heart with a dark outline sits at the centre of the design, with a cream banner across it bearing the words 'It takes strength to be gentle and kind' in black capitals. Green leaves, a yellow sunburst-style flourish and blue ribbon-like shapes frame the heart. The bold outlines and flat, solid colour fills are typical of traditional tattooing, and the design is centred on the back of the neck against plain skin.

Traditional Neck Heart Banner Quote Leaves Ribbon Sunburst

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The big top had been patched so often that rain came through in a dozen places, and Mr Harrow had stopped pretending otherwise. We were down to four acts, two ponies and a grey mare called Juno who could no longer manage the ring steps. Every evening Dad counted the seats still sold and wrote the figure in the ledger with the same careful pencil he used for the wages.

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Juno was to go to the knacker's in Boston on the Thursday. The buyer had been round twice with his hands in his pockets, and his van already had its tailgate down. Lou, who had lifted anvils and tables and once a grown man through the air on a rope, stood in the mud with his cap crushed in both fists and said nothing. Then he climbed into the horsebox, sat down in the straw beside her, and stayed there until the light went out of the field.

In the morning he walked out to the buyer and said he'd take her on himself, for the price of her feed and a pot of tea. The man laughed, then saw Lou's face and didn't. Nobody asked where the money would come from. Lou carried the water buckets down to her paddock, one in each hand, the way he had always carried everything, and I understood then that strength had never been about the weights.

Before the last wagon rolled, I went to the side panel where a banner had been painted years before, the paint gone the colour of weak tea. Someone had scrubbed the circus name off long ago, but the words still showed through the flaking: it takes strength to be gentle and kind. I put my thumb on the letters and read them aloud to Juno, who didn't mind when I stumbled over the long ones.