Black lettering tattoo reading One foot in the grave on the calf of a leg, shown next to a prosthetic leg with a trainer on the foot.

Quote lettering on a calf beside a prosthetic leg

Lettering · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a bare lower leg with the words One foot in the grave.... tattooed on the calf in bold black block lettering. A prosthetic leg with a grey socket and a trainer on its foot stands beside the tattooed leg on a parquet floor. The lettering is solid black ink with no shading, and the image is entirely black and grey.

Lettering Calf Text Quote Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Pell had mended boots in the same narrow shop on Chapel Row for forty-one years, and in all that time nobody had ever asked him to make a shoe for a grave. So when Dolly Rooke came in on a wet Tuesday with a carrier bag and a face like a shut door, he assumed it was about her husband's brogues, the ones Gerald had worn to the Odeon and back for a decade.

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It wasn't. She set the bag on the bench and unwrapped a pair of white trainers, laces tucked in, soles still bright. "Gerald's," she said. "He wants burying in them. Says he's not going up there looking like a Sunday pensioner." Pell turned one over. The left had been scuffed once and neatly restitched by somebody who knew their trade. "Why bring them to me?" "Because you're the only one who'll tell me straight what's wrong with them."

He looked a long time, then fetched a tin of black dye and a fine brush from the drawer under the till. He worked the scuffs out of the toe cap, eased a new heel onto the back, and talked the whole while about rain, the council, and a bloke in Hull who had once tried to bury his cat in Clarks. Dolly laughed twice and cried once, and neither of them mentioned the sensible shoes waiting at home.

When he was done he wrapped the pair in brown paper and tied the string in a bow, the way Gerald always liked his parcels. "There," he said. "Nobody will know they've been mended." Dolly paid him in coins from a purse with a broken clasp, and on the step she turned round. "One foot in the grave, Gerald would say. Doesn't mean you have to go in with the wrong shoes on."