Traditional style tattoo of a red and black snake coiled around a spoked wheel, with two red flowers, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Snake coiled around a wheel on a thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A snake with red and cream banding and a yellow-tipped head wraps around a black spoked wheel, with its tail hanging below. Two red five-petal flowers with green leaves sit at the upper left and left edges of the design. Bold black outlines, solid fills and teal and brown accents give it a classic flash look, shown on a thigh against a white background.

Traditional Thigh Snake Wheel Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The big wheel went over on the Carlisle road on Tuesday, spokes flying everywhere like someone had dropped a box of matches. Dad would have sworn for an hour. I just sat in the mud with Mrs Pelham in the crook of my arm and waited for the rain to stop, because she hates the cold more than I hate anything. She is the last of the red-and-cream serpents, the one the bills still promise, though the bills are yellow now and the posters have been pasted over twice.

We have nine people left under canvas. The fire-eater went to a cruise ship in March, and the strongman sends postcards from Margate where he sells insurance. Mrs Pelham and I still do two shows a night for whoever comes in out of the wet. Last Saturday there were eleven children and a man who paid in shillings he had been saving since the war, and I think he cried when she lifted her head towards him. I did not have the heart to tell him she was only looking for warmth.

The wheel is off the wagon and propped against the centre pole. I have been mending the spokes with a borrowed brace and the wire Dad used to bind the cage doors. It is slow work. With each spoke I tighten, the snake seems to settle, as if the whole act has a rhythm it wants back, her tail hanging down over the rim the way you used to sit on the wagon step.

If you come up for the last week of the fair, bring your good boots. I will have the wheel turning by then, and there is a place on the ground for you, if you want it. Write back, even if it is only to say no.

Love, Nell