Colour tattoo of an ornate hot air balloon in teal, pink and cream with the word freedom in black script below it, on the outer thigh.

Hot air balloon and freedom script on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a hot air balloon with a patterned envelope filled with teal, pink, cream and orange ornamental motifs, a small basket and rope lines. The word freedom is written in black script beneath the balloon, with a thin line linking the two. The balloon is set against bare skin on the outer thigh, with a blurred outdoor background.

Neo-trad Lettering Thigh Hot air balloon Freedom Script Pattern Basket

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tom Ashby had held the tether at Coldharbour fair for three summers and never once let go of it, not even when the wind came off the fen and dragged the envelope sideways like a dog at a gate. Mr Pell shouted instructions from the basket while his wife stitched patches onto the silk. The envelope was painted teal and rose and cream, with ornaments that Mrs Pell swore had been copied from a rug her mother had burned for warmth.

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On the last evening, a girl from the carousel came across the stubble with a paper bag of barley sugars and asked whether the balloon might take one passenger who was not paying. Pell said no. Tom said nothing, because the girl had already climbed in, sweets in one fist, and the burner roared, and the rope hummed in his palms like a plucked wire.

Then the stake snapped. Pell was bellowing hold, boy, hold, and Tom did hold, for about as long as it takes to say the word twice, before the rope burned through his fingers and went up after the balloon, looping like a ribbon in the dusk. He stood with a cut palm and watched the colours shrink over the sugar beet until they were no bigger than a barley sugar.

A postcard reached the fair a month later, addressed to nobody in particular, with a picture of Cromer pier on the front. On the back someone had written a single word in looping pencil and underlined it twice. Tom pinned it above his bed beside the frayed end of the rope, which he had never been able to throw away.