Outline world map tattoo on the ribs

We pulled up stakes at Lincoln on Tuesday and the Atlantic went into the wagon rolled like a wet carpet, so I have had to draw the world again on the back of a feed sack. Your father's trick was never to lift the pencil. Start at the Cape of Good Hope, he said, and keep going until you come home.

I started with Africa because it sits fat in the middle and everything else hangs off it. Then came the long slope of South America, narrowing to a point like a dropped coat hanger, and Cape Horn, where the sack creased and I had to go over it twice. Mrs Okafor's boy watched from the caravan step and asked why the lines never close. I told him the sea is what joins them, and the sea is not something you draw. He said that was cheating, and I suppose it was.

North of the Sahara the pencil went wobbly. Europe came out crooked, Britain looked like a pear someone had sat on, and I rubbed out Iceland twice before it would sit right. By the time I reached the top of the sack the candle had burned to a stub and the lamps were going out one by one down the field.

I am writing this on the back of the map itself, so forgive the smudges. The line I finished at two this morning starts at a thumb-sized Lincoln, runs down through the Americas, over the Indian Ocean, and ends in a small hard loop around the town where we keep the wagon in winter. Come and see it before the rain takes it. I have left a gap at the bottom for you to fill in with whatever is left of the trip.