Black and grey script lettering tattoo on a person's torso, reading a short quote that begins with the word Dad.

Script quote tattoo across the torso

Lettering · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a tattoo of a handwritten-style script quote that opens with the word Dad, followed by several lines of text. The linework is fine and even, with soft grey shading giving the letters a slightly raised look against the skin. The text fills most of the frame, with the edge of the body visible at the top and right.

Lettering Chest Script Quote Text Dad

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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

You learn a fair's route by smell before you learn it on a map: diesel and candyfloss on the Hull road, wet canvas and fried onions outside Doncaster. Your father's name is still painted in red on the side of the dodgems van, half hidden under the new owner's lettering, because Ray Tolland never paid a signwriter to scrape anything off. Every Saturday you stand by the generator and read it twice, the way you check a knot you already know is sound.

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The lad who runs the waltzer now asks why you don't just let it go. You tell him the ride still turns the way your dad set it, a half-beat behind the music, and that a machine remembers the hands that built it. He laughs, then sees you aren't joking, and goes back to tightening bolts. In your coat pocket you carry a tin of his old grease caps, the rust worn smooth where his thumb used to rest on them.

In October the fair packs up for winter in a frosted field outside Pontefract. Tucked in the glovebox of the van you find a note in his blocky capitals: TELL THE KID THE BIG WHEEL NEEDS A NEW PAWL BEFORE SPRING. Underneath, smaller, as if he'd written it after a second cup of tea: Keep it turning, love. You spend the morning flat on your back under the wheel, knuckles split, until the new pawl clicks home. You say his name out loud, to nobody, and the wheel holds.