Black ink handwritten script reading Wait and hope with a long sweeping underline, drawn on a white card over a dark wooden surface, in a lettering style suited to a tattoo design.

Script lettering reading Wait and hope

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A handwritten black ink script reads Wait and hope on a white card, with a long tapering stroke running under the words and out to the right. The letterforms are thin and even, with a flowing connected style and a few loops on the capitals and ascenders. The card sits at an angle on a dark wood grain surface, which gives strong contrast and a simple, monochrome composition.

Lettering Script Lettering

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fair left the Cattle Market car park on a Tuesday in October, the day the lights always came down. I was nineteen and behind on rent in Hull, and I'd been given the hook-a-duck stall because the lad who had it ran off with a dancer from the Waltzer. Mrs Pardoe had the caravan with painted moons at the end of the row. Every evening she sent over stewed tea with a card tucked under the saucer.

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Two words on each card in her looping hand: Wait and hope. I asked her once what they were for. She was sorting a tin of buttons and didn't look up. "Folk come in wanting a yes, love. I can't give them one, so I give them something to carry." Then one wet week I watched a man in a flat cap read his card twice in the mud, and tuck it inside his shirt like a letter from home.

On the last night the generator died and the caravan went dark. Mrs Pardoe came out with a torch and a shoebox of cards. "Hand them out to anyone stood about looking lost. My knees won't do another season." I stayed by the ducks until my fingers ached. Nobody came except a boy of about six, who won a plastic spaniel and asked if it could wait with him.

By dawn the lorries were rolling past the petrol station with their lights still on. I turned over my last card and found the words pressed through from the back, reversed, so I had to hold it to the window to read them. I keep it in my wallet now. Some mornings I hold it to the light and wait for the rest of the sentence, and it never comes.