Sorry we're closed sign on an upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A hanging sign reading 'Sorry we're closed' is tattooed on the upper arm, with the script 'Sorry' above bold capitals 'CLOSED'. Below near the elbow are outlined drawings of a paintbrush and a pen or blade. The work uses clean black linework with light grey shading, against a plain grey background and a dark sleeve.

Lettering Upper arm Sign Lettering Paintbrush Pen

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You know the sign before you see the hall. Someone has hung it on the coat hooks by the fire door, the board cracked along one edge, the words still in your careless capitals from the summer you were fourteen. The art room had been shut for a week of asbestos checks, and Mr Hollis had asked you to paint something for the door so the caretakers would stop tramping mud across the floor. You gave him Sorry we're closed, with the Sorry leaning sideways as if it were apologising to the pigeons.

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The hall smells of warm crisps and somebody's cologne. Gary Lowther is handing out name badges from a shoebox, and the DJ is playing Wonderwall for the third time. You stand by the sign with a plastic cup of white wine that tastes of the cardboard box it came in. Nobody else remembers who painted it. Mr Hollis is in a care home in Rochdale now, and he told you once that he kept the board in the stock cupboard for twenty-six years because it was the only thing in the school that ever told the truth.

You open your bag and find the brush you still carry, the squirrel hair worn to a point, and a cheap biro with its clip snapped off. Under CLOSED you paint a small line in careful black, then a second one beneath it. Back Monday. Nobody notices. You hang the board back on its nail with the lettering facing the room, and for a moment the whole hall reads it, grins, and goes back to its drinks.