Script word love on a finger

The big top came down on Tuesday in a wind off the Humber, and we folded it corner to corner the way Dad taught us, nobody saying much. Mr Pargeter has sold the elephants' winter pen to a farmer outside Goole, and the sign work is finished. Eleven years I have lettered every wagon in this outfit: the Royal Sovereign, the Dancing Mares, the Flying Brenners. On Monday I painted SUNSET CIRCUS across the lorry doors in gold leaf, and my hand did not shake once, which tells you how little it meant.

The small word I did in March, in a back room in Hull, with a man who called me love the whole time he worked. It is the only lettering I have ever done that nobody else will read from the road. Thin copperplate, one dark ink, the same looping hand I learned from Dad's old scrolls on the Sovereign's panels. I wanted one word I could carry without a wagon around it.

Dad always said the best lettering is the kind you can only read when you are close enough to need it. I used to think he meant the tent. I think now he meant us.

I'm driving the van to Leeds on the ninth with the sign boards and my brushes in the back. Keep the kettle on, and don't let Ray tell you about the lion again. Your loving sister, Ivy.