Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Travel stamps and globe on upper back
Back · Mixed · Photo
The tattoo shows a cluster of travel stamps reading Barcelona and Athens, with a globe, a compass rose, a small aeroplane and a pink camel stamp. Thin black outlines define the globe and compass, while the stamps use blue and pink fills with light shading. The design is arranged across the upper back beside the shoulder blade.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Nell, The mail sack came aboard at Gibraltar with a bent corner and the Barcelona postmarks still sharp enough to read, which I took as a sign. Captain Doyle let me have the sorting table in the chart room because the steward cannot tell a franc from a drachma, so I have spent three evenings with a pot of blue ink and the purser's rubber stamps, trying to make the whole ship look like a passport.
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The compass rose I drew on the back of a manifest, because Mr Okafor says a man who cannot find north should not be trusted with cargo. The globe is only the lid of a boot polish tin pressed onto paper, but the camel came out better than I expected. We loaded olive oil at Athens, and the building on that stamp is the one from the lantern book we used to share, the one with the columns that Mother swore was a bank.
Yesterday a letter came out with the pilot boat, and it was typed. Typed, Nell. The shipping office says the aeroplane post will carry letters from Croydon to Cairo in three days, so by the time you read this the ship will be nothing but a line in the company ledger. I have pressed the little aeroplane onto the last sheet anyway, and I am keeping this copy in the flat tin under my bunk.
Write back care of the purser at Port Said, and tell me which stamp you like best.
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