Metallic gold geometric wrist tattoos

The honeycomb mould came back from the foundry with a crack running through cell nine, so I've spent two evenings with a loupe and a pot of wax trying to close it before the Dover consignment. Mr Okafor from the customs office rang twice asking why the sample box is still sitting in Folkestone. I told him it was in good hands, which is more than I can say for my tea, gone cold beside the bench.

The trouble with honeycomb is that every hexagon has to talk to its neighbours. Miss one join and the whole sheet pulls out of true, like a hem that's been let down. I cut the damaged cells away and rebuilt them from the spare plate you left, the one with the thin silver edge you said was too fussy. It turns out fussy is what the pattern needs. The rings above it I could do in my sleep: interlocking circles that never quite close, so the eye keeps travelling round.

Border men like things counted, so I counted. Forty-two hexagons, eleven rings, one chain band of nine links that has to bend at the wrist without snapping. I sent the photographs and the reply came back in four minutes: "Passed. Mind the gold on the crossing, it rubs off on uniforms." That made me laugh, because we both know it is only ever a transfer, and it lifts off skin in a week.

Come up on Sunday. Bring the good scissors and the tin with your mother's initials. I'll have the kettle on and the last sheet laid flat on the bench, and we can see whether the rings still turn when you lift them.