Close photo of a black serif lettering tattoo reading bad circumstances good jokes on an upper arm, with an office background.

Text tattoo reading bad circumstances good jokes

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm or upper arm carrying a two-line tattoo of the words bad circumstances good jokes in a black, plain serif typeface. The lettering is crisp, with even black linework and no shading, and the text sits left of centre across the middle of the arm. Blurred office equipment, monitors and a desk phone fill the background, and a person in a striped top is partly visible at the bottom left.

Lettering Upper arm Text Quote Serif lettering Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marjorie,

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The big top came down in Shrewsbury on Tuesday, half of it anyway. The canvas tore along the seam where Mr Ostrowski patched it with bedsheets last winter, and the wind did the rest. Nobody was hurt, which Dad would have called a miracle and Mr Fenwick called a bad afternoon for the insurers. We sat in the mud afterwards eating cold sausage rolls, and Fenwick stood at the flap with his hands in his waistcoat and said, "Bad circumstances, good jokes, ladies and gentlemen," and the boy who sells programmes laughed so hard he got the hiccups.

I have been thinking about that line all week. Fenwick says it the way other men say grace. He has said it through the lion's cough, the elephant that will not go up the ramp, and the night the generator caught and we performed the second half by torchlight with our breath showing. I used to think it was a dodge. Now I think it might be the only honest thing he owns.

So I have decided to do the clown act properly. Not the red nose and the bucket, but the one about the man who keeps apologising to the weather. It goes down better than it should. On Saturday a child in the third row asked if the rain was part of the show, and I said yes, sir, the best part, and she believed me.

We open again at Newark on the fourteenth. Come if you can. Bring the good blue thread for my collar. I will save you a seat near the back, where the canvas still holds.

Love, Pip