Two matching traditional tattoos on the ankles, a red and white life ring with rope on the left and a black anchor with script on the right.

Matching anchor and life ring ankle tattoos

Traditional · Ankle · Mixed · Photo

The image shows the lower legs of two people, each with a tattoo near the ankle, forming a matching pair. The left tattoo is a coloured life ring in red, white and blue with a rope and a small wave, beside partly legible italic script. The right tattoo is a solid black anchor with bold outlines and similar script, and the composition is a close crop on the two legs against a plain background.

Traditional Ankle Anchor Rope Sea Script Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sports hall at Ashcombe Comprehensive still smells of rubber and floor polish, and Dana Pryce finds me beside the squash-court doors with a warm plastic cup of prosecco. The DJ has been hunting for the right song since eight o'clock, and she says the gap between his playlists is the only honest thing left in the building. Nobody here knows that the two of us once spent a whole summer tying up boats for Mr Oduya, the harbourmaster, who paid us in chips and out-of-date tide tables.

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That was the summer we got the matching tattoos. A man called Lenny ran a machine in a back room above the chippy on Quay Street, and he had one good eye and very steady hands. Dana wanted the life ring, because she said I was the one who kept her from going under. I wanted the anchor, because I was sure she was the one who would pull me back when the weather turned. We argued the wording until Lenny charged us for the argument, and the words stayed: you keep me afloat, and you hold me down.

Dana tells me she has taken a post at the lifeboat station in Padstow and leaves on Monday. She says it lightly, the way people say things they have practised in the car. I tell her the anchor has always been the easier of the two, because it only has to sit still and wait. She laughs and pushes her cup into my hand, and we walk out past the bins into the car park, where the tide has gone out and the hulls lie on their sides in the mud, patient as cattle, waiting for the water to come back for them.