Black ink tattoo across a person's upper back showing the words JUST DO IT in bold block capitals above a large solid black swoosh curve, in a lettering style.

Just Do It lettering and swoosh on a back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a back showing black ink tattoo work. The words JUST DO IT are set in bold block capitals across the upper back, with IT on a second line below, and a large solid black swoosh curve sweeps from the lower left up to the right shoulder. The ink is a single dark tone with no colour or grey shading, and the cropped framing fills the frame with skin.

Lettering Back Text Slogan

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ysolde,

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The rain came off the reclaimed marsh sideways again this morning, so I've taken the upper room at the old Wharf Exchange where the glass still holds. You'll think me daft writing by hand when the terminal in the hall works perfectly well, but I wanted you to see the marker before the sea takes it.

Out past the cranes, where the flats run level to Canvey, someone has cut a long curved blade into the dune and packed it with black pitch so the wind can't lift it. Block capitals stand in the shingle above it, six letters on one line and two on the next, each one taller than a man. The surveyors call it a survey mark. The old women in Gravesend call it the Gull's Wing and say it points the way to fresh water. I have walked the length of it twice and still cannot decide whether it rises or falls.

The lads from the pumping station say the pitch was mixed from the last tar barrels in the depot, and that whoever laid it wouldn't say why they chose those words. Harrow, the engineer, reckons it was a joke that outlived the people who understood it. I think it was a plea, written large so that somebody walking the sea wall in the dark could read it without a lamp.

Tell Mum I'm eating properly. The canteen has started doing lentils on Thursdays, which is more than anyone expected of them. I'll be back on the Tuesday packet with the seed samples, and if the tide has the blade by then I'll bring you a chip of the pitch instead.

Love, Ada