Hand-drawn grey lettering design reading IF NOT NOW WHEN, with the words stacked and shaded in pencil on paper.

If not now when lettering design

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows the phrase IF NOT NOW WHEN drawn as stacked, hand-lettered capitals with the letters set at varying heights and angles. The strokes are shaded in grey pencil with a textured fill, giving the letters depth and a sketched, hand-made feel. The design fills most of a plain paper background, with faint fold creases visible across the sheet.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, I have started this four times on the backs of galley tickets and burned three on the range, so forgive the grease where my thumb got to it. The Marguerite sails at six and I am not on her. Cook has my bunk and my knife roll, and I have a train ticket to Hull folded in my shirt pocket, which I have checked twice already.

Keep reading

Mother used to say it at the sink whenever she dithered over something: if not now, when? She said it about the wallpaper and the hip she would not have seen to, and she said it the morning she walked to the shops and did not come back for a week. I used to think it was a question for other people. Yesterday Mr Harrow, who ruins every potato he touches, asked why I was scrubbing the brass stockpot when nobody had asked me to. I told him I was practising my leaving, and he laughed so hard he had to sit on the flour bin.

I have folded this in eight because I kept folding it when I was frightened, as if the paper could get smaller than the fear. Do not wait up. I know you will. Put the kettle on, and if the kitchen light is out when I come up the lane, I will know you have given up on me, and I will knock anyway.

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