Tattoo on skin of a framed cartoon scene with pink-clad figures above black Latin lettering reading Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Latin lettering below a framed cartoon scene

Lettering · Other · Mixed · Photo

A close crop of a tattoo showing a framed picture with two figures in pink trousers standing on a brown wooden floor, with shaded grey and brown tones. Below the frame, black hand-lettered Latin text reads Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, with bold, uneven strokes. The pink and brown colour sits above the black and grey lettering, giving a mixed palette.

Lettering Other Latin text Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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I've got the picture down off the nail at last, the one that hung over the bar at the Crown, and I'm sending you a photo because you won't believe the state of the frame. Two lads in pink trousers, stood on Mrs Pargeter's sprung dance floor the night the hall flooded, and your mother swore blind they were us. Dad never saw it that way. He said the pink was a rum colour for a man of his standing, and that was the end of the argument for forty years.

Mum's words are underneath, painted in the same black she used for the raffle sign. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. She got it from a lad at the typing school who said it was Latin and meant don't let the buggers grind you down. Dad went to the library in Ashby to check, came back saying it was nonsense Latin, which he found more offensive than the swearing. She laughed so hard she had to sit on the stairs.

I keep thinking about the floor. Forty years of feet on those boards, every one of them tapping out a rhythm to stop themselves being ground down. Come up at Easter and bring the varnish. I'll show you where the lino's lifted, and we can decide together whether the pink trousers stay.

Love, Jean