Colour traditional-style tattoos on a leg in bath water, showing a rose, a snake, a matryoshka doll and a hot air balloon with an ornate basket.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional rose, doll and balloon tattoos on a leg

Traditional · Other · Mixed · Photo

The leg shows a cluster of bold traditional-style tattoos, including a red rose and coiled snake at the top, a matryoshka doll in a red headscarf, and a large hot air balloon with an ornate basket and decorative scrollwork. The black outlines are heavy and even, with shading in dark greys and teal. The leg rests in soapy bath water, and the pale, softly lit skin sets off the saturated reds, greens and yellows of the colour work.

Traditional Other Rose Snake Hot air balloon Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the balloon went up again this morning over the flat fields past Selby, and I watched it from the back of the lorry with a cup of tea going cold in my hands. Dad would have sworn at the wind, but it was kind to us. The envelope is the colour of a bruised plum, with the gold scrollwork Mr Ashdown painted along the band, and the basket hangs under it like a little church with its windows lit from inside.

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I've kept Mum's old matryoshka in the wicker corner where she always rode, the one with the red headscarf and the chipped cheek. When the burner roared on the first lift I swear she tipped her head back to look up, the way she used to at the Hull fair. Gran's rose is still pinned to the tailgate, dry now, and the snake she made me promise to keep under the lorry seat is curled round the spare gas bottle, out of the way of trouble.

Yesterday I found something I'd missed for eleven years. The doll unscrews in the usual way, and inside the smallest one there was a square of paper folded tight as a bud. It was Dad's handwriting, in pencil, saying he was going up once more before the winter, that the wind was right and he'd be down by teatime. He wasn't. You know that. I didn't cry until I'd read it twice, and then I put the little one back in her place and let the others sit on top of her.

Come for the Easter fair. Bring the good thermos and your boots, and if you can, bring the smallest doll back to me so I can hang her where he'd have wanted her. The field is booked from Thursday. Ring the caravan when you get in.

Love, Bea