Infinity quote tattoo on the side

Ernest Pask came back from the war with one good hand and a tin of signwriter's enamel he'd nicked from the depot. Nobody asked him to paint anything. He went round Cawby with a ladder on his shoulder, looking at walls the way other men look at horses, and in the spring of fifty-three Mr Oddie asked him to do the fascia over the bakery. Ernest said he would if he could write it how he liked. Mr Oddie said he couldn't care less so long as the bread stayed hot.

So Ernest sat on the bakery step with a jam jar of water and a brush, and he wrote the words the way his mother used to write notes on the back of the milk money. The letters go up and down like a hen walking. Halfway round the loop he ran out of black, so he finished with the red he kept for the postbox. That's why there's a heart at each turn of the figure, because he said a thing going round forever ought to have a bit of warm at the joins or it would never stop.

Ernest died the winter after, and Mr Oddie painted over nothing. The sign's still up, though the paint's gone soft at the edges. Every morning Mr Oddie's girl walks under it with the trays, and not one of them has ever once wondered which way round it goes.