Colour tattoo of a red and white striped hat above a black lettered quote arranged in a circle, on the upper back.

Striped hat and circular quote on upper back

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a red and white striped top hat with a black brim, set beneath a circle of black serif lettering that reads Today You are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. The outlines are bold and clean, with red shading inside the hat and white left as negative space. The text follows the curve of the circle and frames the hat at the centre of the composition.

Lettering Back Quote Text Circle Hat

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The crate had come by rail three weeks late, and by the time you pried off the lid with a bread knife in the back of Pelham's Haberdashery, Mrs Tilley had already told the whole of Marsh Lane what it was going to be. She stood at the counter tapping her gloves against her palm, waiting for you to be disappointed.

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Inside, folded in tissue paper, lay a striped top hat, red bands alternating with white, its black brim as wide as a dinner plate. The council had ordered it for the Founder's Day parade, a stunt they had argued about for a month, and pinned to the crown was a card typed in a neat, bored face: Today you are you. Read it aloud and you could almost hear a radio announcer reading the shipping forecast, flat and sure of itself.

Mrs Tilley wanted it wrapped and returned. You wanted to put it on, so you did. It sat low over your ears and smelled of cedar and somebody else's cigarettes. In the spotted glass of the shop window you looked like a stranger playing the fool, which was rather the point of a parade. The bell over the door rang, and a boy with a bicycle chain looped round one wrist asked if the hat was for sale. You told him it was not, which was the first lie you had told all year that felt like a kindness.

On Founder's Day you walked the length of the high street with the brim tipping at every corner. The crowd cheered the striped crown and the band played something brassy, but you kept your hand on the card in your breast pocket, which you had read so often the ink had softened. Nobody in Marsh Lane had ever asked you to be anybody else. Mrs Tilley, watching from the step, lifted her gloves in a small, grudging wave.