Black fine line script reading All good things are wild and free, with a feather and small birds, across a woman's shoulder and collarbone.

Script quote and feather on a shoulder

Lettering · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink script quote reads All good things are wild and free across the collarbone and shoulder, with a feather at the end and three small flying birds below the text. The linework is fine and crisp, with soft grey shading on the feather's barbs. The subject is shown in close crop against a blurred green background, with the tattoo as the clear focus.

Lettering Fine line Shoulder Quote Script Feather Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the Harrow Road clock has stopped again, so I am writing this on the back of a timetable while the 4.10 to Carlisle sulks on platform two. You will not believe what turned up in the lost property cupboard this morning: a grey feather pressed flat inside an old tin of Bassett's allsorts, with a slip of paper beside it that read only, All good things are wild and free.

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I have been turning that over all day. The man who left it, Mr Pargeter, was signalman here before the war, and in forty years he never once let a bird nest in the girders, which tells you the sort of man he was. Tucked under the feather was a pencil sketch of three swifts flying east, drawn so faintly I had to hold it up to the window to see the lines.

I went down to the sidings at dusk with the tin under my arm. Nobody was about except a goods guard eating his tea on an upturned crate. I asked him whether Pargeter had ever had children. He said yes, one daughter, who went to sea, and that the last anyone heard she was in Valparaiso painting birds on the sides of ferries.

I posted the feather to her this afternoon, care of the harbour office, with a note in my worst handwriting. The swifts, I suppose, will sort out the rest. Write soon, and tell Tom I have finally found his gloves. Yours, Eileen.