Colour tattoo on an upper arm showing a shaded football with laces, a black and gold fleur-de-lis, and the words NEW ORLEANS above and SAINTS below.

New Orleans Saints football tattoo on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a shaded American football with laces on the left, with a black fleur-de-lis with a gold and white outline sitting over its centre. The words NEW ORLEANS arc across the top in yellow lettering with a black outline, and SAINTS sits beneath in matching lettering. The ball is rendered in red and brown tones with grey laces, and the photograph is taken close up on the upper arm.

Neo-trad Upper arm Fleur-de-lis Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ball had come home from Louisiana wrapped in a tea towel between two jars of pralines, and Dad set it on the mantelpiece in Hessle and told everyone not to touch it, which meant everyone did. Its brown leather had faded pale where the sun reached it, and the laces had gone grey with handling. The crest on its side had a crack running through the middle of the fleur, the kind a thumb leaves when it presses too long. Mum wanted it binned. Dad wanted to know who would look after it when he went.

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The summer Eddie from across the road turned up with a bruised cheek and no ball of his own, Dad took it down and tossed it over the fence to him. Eddie punted it straight into Mrs Okafor's rhubarb, and they spent an hour on their knees under the leaves, parting stalks and swearing softly in case she heard. When Eddie finally threw it back, one lace had snapped clean through, and the ball gave a small sigh when Dad caught it.

That evening he sat on the back step with his sewing tin and a length of waxed thread. He worked without speaking, drawing each stitch tight and biting the end off with his front teeth, and when he was done the seam was crooked but it held.

It went back on the mantelpiece the next morning. Mum said nothing about it, but she dusted round it all the same.