Two traditional-style tattoos on a pair of thighs: a bearded man in profile beside a compass and flowers, and a woman in a headscarf beside a red rose.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Portraits, compass and rose on the thighs

Traditional · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

Two tattoos sit side by side on the upper thighs: a black and grey profile of a bearded man above a compass rose and red flowers, and a woman in a headscarf in profile beside a large red rose with green leaves. The linework is bold and dark with solid fills and some soft grey shading. The colour is limited to reds and greens on the flowers and rose, with the portraits in black and grey, and the two designs mirror each other across the legs.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Walter, Mrs Pring has taken to standing at our gate with her arms folded, so I know the whole of Ramsey Bay has heard about the telegram. I haven't opened the front window since Tuesday. The wireless keeps reading out Dogger and Fisher and German Bight, and I find I'm listening for the words Lowestoft and home.

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I took the compass from your drawer, the brass one with the cracked glass. Ellis at the market said a man can find his way back from anywhere if he knows where north sits, so I've been turning it on the kitchen table like a fool. The needle always settles on the same place, which is more than I can say for the rest of the village. Mother says I should stop. I told her she's stopped me enough for one lifetime.

On Thursday I walked down to Kearney's back room above the saddler's. He had the flash sheets pinned to the wall, and I found the pair you'd asked him to draw for the wheelhouse before you sailed: a bearded man in profile over a compass rose and red flowers, and a woman in a headscarf facing him beside a great red rose with its leaves gone dark. Kearney said the leaves always come out darker than you expect on paper. I asked him to make the man look back at her. He laughed and said the pair of them would never agree on anything, which I took as a yes.

Come home by the Michaelmas tide, Walter. The paper's still on the wall and the needle's steady. I am too, mostly. Your loving wife, Nell.

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