Small black serif number 11 tattoo on the side of a person's upper back, beside a pale bra strap.

Small serif number 11 on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop of a person's upper back and shoulder showing a small tattoo of the numerals 11 in a black, serif typeface. The numerals are solid black with no visible shading, set against smooth skin in soft natural light. A pale bra strap and a blue-and-cream patterned bra band sit near the tattoo, with a plain grey background behind.

Lettering Back Number

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Carousel number eleven had a split in its left ear, and Mr Pardoe swore the horse had been that way since the Hull fair of 1958, which was the sort of thing he swore about everything. We carried it from ground to ground on the back of the lorry, wrapped in a tarpaulin that smelled of diesel and candyfloss, and every Monday my job was to hang the number board so the children could find their horse.

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Nobody wanted eleven. Children picked the grey one nearest the organ, or the gold one with the painted roses, and eleven stood at the back with its mane gone the colour of weak tea. Then in Scarborough a girl of about seven climbed onto it and refused to get off until the ride ended, three times round, holding the brass pole with both hands and saying the horse was hers because it had been waiting.

Pardoe said she could ride it free for the rest of the season. I thought he'd sell her a ticket out of principle, but he stood by the generator with his cap in his hands and watched her go round, and when the lights came on at dusk he took the number board down and painted a fresh 11 on it in black, careful as a man signing a will.

We packed up at the end of October. The girl's mother bought the old board off us for a pound, and it hangs in a back bedroom in Leeds now, I expect, though I never asked. Pardoe died the winter after. The horse is still with the fair, split ear and all, and the girl, I'm told, still rides it whenever the show comes through her town.