Black serif lettering reading I'm the hero of this story across the side of a torso, partly covered by a grey knit top.

I'm the hero of this story text tattoo

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a line of black serif lettering reading "I'm the hero of this story." running diagonally across smooth skin on the side of the body. The ink is solid black with crisp edges and even fill, and the skin tone is warm. A grey knit fabric gathers at the bottom of the frame, and the shallow focus keeps the lettering sharp.

Lettering Other Quote Text Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Ashdown wanted the line in italic, but the foundry had only the roman left in twelve point, so I set it upright and he grumbled for a week. The book was a memoir of a man who had sold reconditioned boilers across the Humber for thirty years, and every chapter ended with him winning something: an argument with the council, a quarrel with his brother over a van. I had set four hundred pages of him by the time we reached the last gathering, and I had stopped believing a word.

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The final proof came up on a Thursday. Ashdown had written a new sentence for the title page, and it sat there in black on the galley, handsome and certain. I'm the hero of this story. I read it aloud to the empty composing room, the way I read everything, and the lead type clicked in the rack like a man clearing his throat. Then I did something no compositor should do. I took a bodkin and nudged the letters so the full stop sat a hair wider than it should, the kind of error only the author would ever notice.

Ashdown rang the next morning, furious about the spacing. I told him it was deliberate, that a full stop should give a sentence room to breathe, and he laughed for the first time since his wife's funeral. He never asked why I had kept the spoiled galley, or why I still pin it above my bench, with the one wide gap that nobody else in the shop can see.

Sometimes a customer comes in with a book under his arm and asks whether the type is Caslon. I tell him it is, and that the margins are generous, and that the hero has been well looked after.