Two matching red ladybird tattoos with trailing black dot stars on the ankles, in a traditional style.

Matching ladybird and star ankle tattoos

Traditional · Ankle · Colour · Photo

Two feet are shown side by side, each with a small ladybird tattoo and a curved trail of five to seven small black star dots rising above it. The ladybirds have bold black outlines, filled with red with yellow and orange highlights on the wings. The plain brown floor and dark flip-flops make up the background, and a third foot with a faint star tattoo appears at the lower left.

Traditional Ankle Ladybird Star Matching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The aphids had come up the Conference pears in the first week of August, and by the time I rang Dad from the orchard gate I had counted four hundred and eleven on a single shoot. He kept a blue bottle of spray in the shed with a skull on the label, and he would not let me near it. So I went looking for help in the place I knew best, under the leaves of the old Bramley, where the ladybirds sat in their red cases like sweets someone had forgotten.

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There was one with a chipped wing case, and I named her Mrs Pennock because she carried herself like a headmistress. I cut a trail of small stars from the card Gran used for the church fete posters and pinned them along the orchard wall, from the foot of the ladder to the stone trough at the far end. I told Mrs Pennock that if she followed the stars she would find a feast. She went up the first one slowly, pausing on each point as if checking the bill.

She did not come back for three days. When she did, the trough was ringed with ladybirds, a dozen at least, and the pears were clean and shining in the late sun. Dad stood with the blue bottle in his hand and did not open it. I think he was embarrassed, and I was too proud to say so.

The stars are still on the wall, faded to the colour of weak tea. Every August I walk the trail with my hands in my pockets and count them, and every year there are the same seven, and somewhere in the leaves a small red thing is working, paying no attention to me at all.