Black and grey script tattoo reading "life is good" in lettering style on the side of a torso, below a black sports bra.

"Life is good" script on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a torso in a black sports bra, with the words "life is good" written in a flowing, handwritten script across the side of the ribs. The linework is solid and even, in black ink with no shading visible. The image is toned in sepia-like greys, with the tattoo running horizontally across the lower frame.

Lettering Ribs Word Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sea had been running grey since Lundy, and by the fourth night the forecastle smelled of wet wool and paraffin. The cook had given up on hot food. I sat on the locker with the slop book open on my knees, copying the barometer the mate read out to me, and the lamp swung so that every figure came out crooked.

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Bosun Ruddock came down at two bells with his oilskins streaming and watched me for a while. I said I was only copying the weather. He took the pencil from my fingers, licked the point, and wrote across the bottom of the page in capitals that climbed uphill: LIFE IS GOOD. 'It's a log, lad, not a court,' he said. 'Nobody reads the bit that's false.'

I didn't believe him, but I didn't rub it out either. We limped into Rotterdam nine days late with the pit props half sodden and the cook sulking on the quay. The book went ashore with the cargo papers and then into a drawer in the owner's office in Hull, and I forgot it for thirty years, until I went back to sign off a pension and found it in a box marked for the bin.

The words were still there, a little faded, climbing their hill. I took a clean pencil from my pocket, wrote the date beneath them, then the weather, which was rain coming in off the water with a wind behind it, and I was glad of every drop.