Close-up of a black lettering tattoo on a man's upper chest, with the word LOL repeated in four rotated orientations to form a cross.

LOL lettering in a cross on the chest

Lettering · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows a close-up of a bold black lettering tattoo on the upper chest of a person with light skin and chest hair. The word LOL appears four times, each copy rotated to face a different direction, so the words meet in the centre to form a cross. The linework is solid black with no shading or colour, set against a slightly reddened patch of skin.

Lettering Chest Lettering Cross Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, I have hung the thing above the bus station at last, and the night watchman says he cannot read it from any side without tilting his head like a spaniel. Four letters of LOL, each word turned to face a different street, so that from the corner of Castle Row it stands up straight and from the canal bridge it lies on its back. Mr Pardoe wanted it in gold leaf. I told him black enamel, because gold catches the lamps and people stop looking at what it says.

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The job took three nights. I worked from a plank slung off the parapet, with a pot of tar-black paint and a stick of charcoal to pencil the outlines. The trick is the centre. Each word has to lean into the next so the stems meet at one point, and nobody can say which one is the upright. I got the spacing wrong twice. The second time a lad from the chippy shouted up that it looked like a spider had walked through the wet paint, and he was right, and I told him so.

On the last night the fog came off the river and I could hardly see my own brush. I finished the bottom arm by feel. When I climbed down, the whole cross was there in the lamplight, four words pointing at four dark streets, and nobody on any of them to read it.

I have sent Pardoe the bill. He has sent back a note asking whether the letters could be a little less cheerful. I have written back that they are exactly as cheerful as the job required. Come up at the weekend and see it. Stand where I stood and tell me what you read.