Black and white photo of a small fine line laurel wreath tattoo on the outer ankle.

Small laurel wreath on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small laurel wreath is tattooed on the side of an ankle, formed from two curving branches of pointed leaves that meet at a crossed stem at the base. The linework is fine and even, rendered in solid black ink with no shading. The photograph is black and white and shows the ankle and part of the foot against a plain pale background, with the wreath near the centre of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Ankle Laurel wreath Laurel Leaves Wreath Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bay tree behind the Crown had never been cut properly in my lifetime, so when the committee asked me to make the wreath for the Hollow Mile, I went up the ladder with my secateurs and a bad temper. Dorothy Fenn stood at the bottom holding the ladder and telling me how to do my job. Leaves came down into her hair like confetti. She said the old Greeks had crowned their runners with exactly this, and I said the old Greeks had never met the Aldcombe Parish Council.

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The race went round the edge of Ridding Wood, through the bracken, over the stile by the dead elm and back along the lane past the pub. Eleven entrants. Most of them were farm lads who'd run it drunk every October since they were twelve. The one who won was Tom Aske, the postman's boy, who had been practising by running his round in half the time it took his dad, and who came out of the trees with his face the colour of a beetroot and no breath left to say thank you.

I had made the wreath too tight. When they put it on him it pinched his ears and sat crooked over one eye, and everyone laughed, and he laughed loudest. I watched the leaves dry on his head as he walked home, one by one, going brown at the tips. By the Thursday they had lost their shine, and by the Sunday the lane was full of them.

I kept the cuttings. Each spring the bay puts out fresh shoots from the old stump, and I tie a few together with garden string and hang them over the back door, where the smell comes through when it rains. Nobody has asked me for another wreath, so I have never made one.