Black lettering tattoo reading "One foot in the grave..." on the back of a calf, with a prosthetic leg visible beside it.

Quote lettering on a calf

Lettering · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph taken from behind shows a person in dark shorts and trainers standing on a grey floor. The tattoo on the right calf reads "One foot in the grave...." in bold black serif lettering. The image is in colour, with a neutral background and a prosthetic leg visible on the left.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift at Ashcombe House had been broken since Easter, and Maureen Tully had counted every one of the 212 steps between her flat on the fourteenth floor and the street, twice a day, with a carrier bag of shopping swinging from each hand. Len had a saying for the stairs. He called them the long way to the grave, and he said it every time he stopped on a landing to pretend he was admiring the paintwork.

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Len had been dead eleven months. The council had sent a letter about the lift, another about the bins, and a third, typed in capitals, reminding her that the communal garden was not a place for storing garden furniture. Maureen read them at the kitchen table with her tea going cold and a pencil behind her ear. She had booked a plot at Hollin Lane cemetery in March, the one under the sycamore, because Len had always wanted shade. The man on the phone said it was a lovely spot with a view of the car park.

On Thursday the lift shuddered open on the ground floor while she stood in front of it with the shopping. A boy from the flats, perhaps nine, pressed the button for her with great seriousness. 'Going up?' he asked. She said she was, and rode the whole way with her eyes shut, laughing into her scarf like a girl. At the fourteenth floor she stepped out and realised she had not been counting at all.

That evening she took the pencil from behind her ear and wrote on the back of the council's capitals: Ring about the lift. Underneath, in smaller letters, she added: Ring Hollin Lane and tell them the sycamore can wait.

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