Black and red top hat above a spade shape containing the lettering "We're all mad here", tattooed on the forearm in a lettering style.

Top hat and spade with lettering on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A red ribbon and grey, shaded top hat sit above a solid black spade made of stylised lettering that reads "We're all mad here". The hat has black linework with detailed grey shading and a red band, while the lettering is bold black with decorative flourishes. The design is centred on the forearm, with the hat at the top and the spade pointing down the arm against a plain skin background.

Lettering Forearm Top hat Spade Ribbon Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had cleared the Tuesday market of everyone but Tobias Quill, who sat under a sagging awning with his last six hats stacked on an upturned barrel. Nell came splashing past with a shilling in her fist and stopped, because the grey hat on top of the pile had a red band and a red ribbon hanging down its side, and nobody else had looked at it all morning.

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"What do you want for it?" she asked. Tobias took a playing card from his coat, the spade on it so black it looked wet. "One hand of cards," he said. "Win, and the hat is yours. Lose, and you wear it home and keep it on until the rain stops." Nell had never won at anything in her life, but the water was running off her collar and she was tired of being cold, so she sat on the barrel and played.

She won the hand with a queen she had not expected to find. Tobias only nodded and pushed the hat across. "Then you know what the whole town is," he said, and the rain on the awning sounded almost like laughter. Nell put the hat on. It sat well, and the ribbon brushed her cheek as she walked, and she did not take it off, not even at her own front door, where the rain stopped the moment her hand touched the latch.

In the spring she went back to the market with a card of her own, a spade, and pinned it to the post where the awning had been. The stall was gone. The post was bare except for a strip of red ribbon knotted round it, tied in a bow she did not remember tying, and below it someone had written the words on the wood in careful looping letters, each one curling into the next. She read them twice, then touched the brim of the hat and went home the long way, through the puddles.