Close-up of a hand raised above a vintage typewriter, showing a small black fine line ampersand tattoo on the inner wrist.

Small ampersand tattoo on the wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is raised above an old typewriter with a blank sheet of paper loaded in the carriage. A small, neat ampersand is tattooed on the inner wrist, drawn in thin black linework with a classic serif character. The warm, soft-focus composition places the wrist and typewriter keys in the foreground against a wooden desk.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Ampersand Paper

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Margaret Lowe pressed the ampersand key with the side of her thumb, the way she had every working day since 1971, and the bar came up stiff and grudging. "Hollis and Sons," Mr Garside said from the doorway, reading over her shoulder. "The deed says ampersand, Margaret. The printers insist on the symbol, and I'm not paying a man to argue about it."

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She typed the firm name twice, once in full and once with the little character, and the page began to look like something a stranger might trust. Outside, the Leeds rain worked at the window in long brushstrokes. Nobody came into the office on a Saturday except the Hollis sisters, who had been fighting over their father's timber yard since the funeral and wanted it settled on paper before either of them spoke to the other again.

Iris wanted the Sons dropped and her name on the sign alone. Ada wanted the sign left exactly as it was, because their father had painted it himself in 1958 and she could still smell the turpentine on it. They talked over each other until Margaret stopped the machine and asked them, quite plainly, what they were actually arguing about. Neither of them answered. Iris looked at the window. Ada looked at her hands.

Margaret rolled the sheet free of the carriage and laid it between them. The ampersand sat in the middle of the firm's name, small and black and perfectly straight, the one mark on the page that neither sister could improve upon, because it had never once been spelled out.