Close photo of a small fine line script tattoo reading "happy" on the outer thigh of a tanned leg resting on white bedsheets.

Small script word "happy" on a thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of two bare legs resting on white bedsheets, with the small word "happy" written in thin cursive script on the outer side of the upper thigh of the left leg. The lettering is delicate and dark, in black or dark grey ink, and sits near the top of the frame. The right leg, partly in shadow, is unmarked and the soft lighting keeps the focus on the tattoo.

Lettering Fine line Thigh Script Word

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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

Mr Pellow wanted the word on the dodgem cars, not the big letters across the front of the Waltzer but something small, he said, tucked where nobody would look unless they were already smiling. I had the brushes laid out on an upturned crate behind the generator van at Wells, grease from the gondola chains still under my nails.

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I did it in a thin hand, the sort my nan used on the labels of her jam jars, dark enough to read from the step of the caravan. The enamel was the kind that stays put through rain and sea wind. Three nights later the rides were lit up over the car park, and I stood by the ticket hut watching a girl in a yellow anorak run her thumb along the rubber bumper of that same car, slowly, as if she could feel the letters through it.

Pellow sold the ride in October to a man from Skegness who painted over everything, the flames, the stars, the lot. I kept the tin of black enamel, half full, and a rag gone stiff with it. Most winters I open the lid in the van and smell it, and I don't think about the word much.

Last spring a woman at a garden centre asked me to letter the name of her new bench, and I found my hand moving before I'd decided anything. She paid me in cash and didn't ask what the word meant to me. I didn't tell her that I'd never once, in all those seasons, painted anything for myself.