Traditional style colour tattoo on a forearm showing a red heart pierced by an arrow, a banner reading MY AIM IS TRUE, and two swallows with stars.

Swallows and heart banner on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A red heart pierced by an arrow sits at the centre of the design, with a banner across it reading MY AIM IS TRUE in black lettering. Two swallows with black outlines, grey wings and orange and blue details frame the heart, with small black stars scattered across the background. Bold black linework and flat solid colour are set against the skin of a forearm, with a soft, blurred background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the wind has been at the back of the Hollis Arms for three days now and Mrs Pardoe has given up trying to keep the window sashes shut. I am writing this at the table by the scullery door because it is the only place the lamp does not smoke. The swallows came back to the eaves over the yard on Tuesday, all six of them, squabbling over the same bit of mud as they did last summer. Pardoe says they have the right idea and ought to be off to Africa by now, but they are stubborn little beggars and so am I.

Keep reading

You will remember the tattooist in Ramsgate who did my forearm the spring before I went out on the Brightwater. He had a pot of red ink he swore was mixed from cochineal and a lamp he kept on a fishing crate. I asked him for a heart and he gave me a heart with an arrow through it and a banner he said would make the sailors laugh. MY AIM IS TRUE, it says, in black capitals. I have been stuck on it for seven years, through two wrecks in the Channel and one wedding that did not take. Lately I think he was only half joking.

The lad who carries the coal up for Pardoe asked me yesterday what the words meant, and I told him they meant I had never once missed the thing I was reaching for. He looked at me as if I were soft in the head. Then he looked at the swallows, which I have always said were for coming home, and he asked whether they ever got lost. I told him no. Only the people who watched them go.

Send word if the Brightwater comes in. I will be at the scullery table with the lamp, watching the eaves.

Your brother, Tom

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