Black script tattoo reading No half measures across the inner forearm, set against a dark background.

No half measures script on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm showing the words No half measures written in a flowing black script with thin, even linework. The text runs diagonally across the arm from lower left to upper right, with the arm lit from the front against a dark, indistinct background. The ink is solid black with no colour, and the lettering fills most of the frame.

Lettering Forearm Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, I am writing this in the customs hut at Calais with my boots drying on the paraffin heater, because the man in the next booth has been reading the same newspaper since six and I have run out of other things to look at. You will remember Dad's rule. He painted it on the sun visor of every lorry he ever owned, in that looping white hand he used for invoices: No half measures. He said it about tyres and tea and the wedding speech he refused to shorten.

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Yesterday a driver from Tilbury came through with a trailer of pine furniture and a sweating face. The seals were cut, the paperwork was half finished, and he kept offering me a bottle of Scotch to stop looking. I told him what Dad would have told him, that a job done halfway is just a job you will have to do again, and then I made him unload every chair. He called me a cow. By the end I think he was grateful, because the legs were hollow and the bottles were packed inside them like sweets in a jar.

Last week I finally cleared out Dad's cab at the yard. Under the visor was the original card he had tacked up, its corners gone soft with cigarette smoke. I have brought it here in my coat pocket. I tried to copy his hand on the back of this page and it came out crooked, all the loops leaning the wrong way, but I finished every letter and did not stop when it looked silly.

So come home for the funeral, or don't, but decide properly. Either way, I am keeping the card. You always said it was a bit grand for a man who sold carpets. I think he would have liked to hear you say it to his face. Your sister, Jo.