Tattoo designs printed on a white sweatshirt

The swallows are back under the shed eaves, two of them, and they have already fallen out over the mud. I sat on the bench this morning with the jumper across my knees and a tin of Dad's black enamel, trying to get the anchor to sit straight. Your nephew wanted something he could show the lads at the depot, so I told him the rose was my doing and the stag was his grandfather's idea. He laughed and said nobody would believe a woman could draw a stag.

The heart was the hard one. I drew it four times on the back of the gas bill before it looked like it could take the weight, and then the hands, which I did from a photograph of Ron's, because his are the only pair I know well enough to get the knuckles right. Ron says the knuckles are wrong anyway. He says it looks like a handshake at a funeral. I told him to mind his own business and went back to the rose, which has never once given me trouble.

The banner I left until last. I could not choose between true love and the kings, so in the end I wrote both, one under the other, and let the letters run where they liked. The dragon was Ron's, a bit of nonsense copied off a cigarette packet he kept in his wallet for years. I rubbed pencil over the back of it and traced it through. The year on the sleeve is the year we married, so that one at least was easy.

When the paint dried, the jumper looked like a map of somewhere nobody has been. Tell Mum the swallows will be gone by August. I will hang the thing on the line tomorrow where the whole street can see it.