Traditional colour tattoo on a thigh showing a teal rose, a yellow banner reading LIKE HOME, a red shoe and the words THERE'S NO PLACE in black lettering.

Teal rose and ruby slipper on a thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A teal rose with green leaves and a yellow banner reading LIKE HOME sits over a red shoe, with the phrase THERE'S NO PLACE in black lettering curving above and to the right. The bold black outlines and flat, solid fills are typical of traditional tattooing, with the rose shaded in pale teal and dark grey. The design fills the upper thigh of a person wearing denim shorts, and the bright red, yellow and green stand out against the skin.

Traditional Lettering Thigh Rose Shoe Banner Lettering Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

"Mind the generator, Nell, it's been coughing since Margate," Dougie called over the rattle of the dismantled waltzer, and she didn't look up from the cable she was coiling. The fair had packed up at dusk in a field outside Ashford, and the lorries were already grinding onto the A20 with their headlamps dipped.

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Her mother's red shoe lived in the glovebox of the van, wrapped in a tea towel that smelled of candyfloss and diesel. Patent leather, one heel worn down to the nail, bought from a charity shop in Hastings the winter Nell was born. Her mother used to say it was the only thing she owned that didn't need a ticket to cross the country. When she died in the spring, Nell found the shoe in a biscuit tin with a faded teal silk rose pinned to the strap, a prize from some long-gone coconut shy.

Dougie wanted her on the Saturday run to Cromer, the last big site before the season shut. Everyone else had a bunk they'd slept in for years. Nell had a lease on a flat in Maidstone with a radiator that ticked and a door that locked from the inside, signed in August and not yet slept in. She stood beside the van, took out the shoe, and tapped its heels together twice on the gravel, the way her mother had teased her into doing as a girl. Nothing happened except a gull complaining somewhere over the stubble.

She set the shoe on the passenger seat, turned the key, and pulled out with the fair's lights still glowing in the wing mirror like a town she could walk back into. At the first roundabout she indicated left, then right, then left again, laughed at herself, and took the road north towards the Medway.