Neo-traditional tattoo of a piglet peeking out of a teacup with a red rose, framed by pink flowers and green leaves, on a leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Piglet in a teacup with a rose

Neo-trad · Calf · Colour · Photo

A young pig rests its head over the rim of a grey teacup, with a large red rose in the centre of the cup and a blue and white pearl-edged base below. Pink wild roses with yellow centres and green leaves frame the design on both sides. The bold black outlines and smooth colour fills are typical of neo-traditional work, with soft grey shading on the pig's face and ear.

Neo-trad Calf Pig Teacup Rose Flower Leaves Pearl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pig was already sitting in the teacup when I walked into the Co-op hall in Ludlow, which told me Julie Ashby had been planning something. She had been planning things since Year Nine. Nobody had ever brought livestock to a school reunion, though several of us had brought husbands who should have stayed at home.

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The cup had lived on Julie's nan's windowsill for as long as anyone could remember. It was grey china with a fat red rose painted in the middle and a band of pearls round the foot, and it had been the only thing in that front room nobody was allowed to touch. The piglet rested its chin on the rim as if waiting for a bus. It belonged to Mr Hughes, who farmed on the Clee Hills and had driven over in a van that smelled of silage and optimism. "Pearl is seventeen and bored," Julie said, and set a biscuit on the tablecloth for her.

Pearl was the reason we had all been sent home early in the summer of 1989. She had escaped her pen during the school fête, trotted through the bunting and the tombola, and eaten the head teacher's raffle prize, a box of Milk Tray. The Year Eleven boys were blamed, but Julie and I had opened the gate ourselves, and we had never said a word. Standing in that hall with a paper cup of warm squash, I heard Julie confess it to a room of people in cardigans, and a dozen of them started laughing at once.

Mr Hughes was the last to stop. He lifted the teacup carefully, the way you would lift a bird's nest, and Pearl pushed her snout over the edge to see what the fuss was about. Under the strip lights the rose looked almost wet, and the pearls caught the light all the way round the foot. Nobody asked for the pig to be taken home.