Black and grey blackwork mandala tattoo with dotwork shading on the side of a neck, with a partial second tattoo at the left edge.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala tattoo on the side of the neck

Blackwork · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph of a large symmetrical mandala tattoo on the side of a neck. Bold outlines frame layered petals and scalloped rings filled with fine lines and stippled dots. The shading is smooth and the background is a soft, pale blur.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Imogen, I got your card about the reunion at the church hall in Hexham, and I've been turning it over on the kitchen table for a week as if it might say something different if I left it alone. You always could draw a circle freehand. Remember Mrs Tully's art room, the compass we weren't allowed to touch, and you doing a whole ring of petals on the back of a register with a biro?

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Here is what I've been doing instead of the sensible thing. Dad's old sewing box came down from the loft, and inside it was his pattern book from the years he worked at the mill in Blaydon. Graph paper, every page folded into eighths. He drew the same shape over and over: a centre, then a ring of scallops, then petals fanning out until they reached the edge. I've been tracing them with a fine pen. Each ring takes an evening, and the dots I leave until last, one at a time, because if I rush them the whole thing goes grey.

I went to the hall on Saturday anyway, just to look. Half the people I'd have wanted to see had moved to Leeds or were already in the car park with their engines running. Kath Ormerod asked after you and said you still owe her a fiver from the bus trip. I laughed too loudly, went home early, and finished the bottom row.

So say yes or say no, but come to my kitchen before March. I want you to tell me where the middle should sit, because I've drawn it three times and it keeps drifting off centre. Bring the compass if you still have it. Love, Maggie.

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