Black and grey tattoo of a triangle with a circle inside and lettering along its edges, shown on bare skin.

Triangle and circle with quote lettering

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a large triangle with a smaller circle inside it, with a vertical line through the centre. Words are set along the edges and within the circle, including Mischief Managed and lines of text that follow the curves and angles of the shapes. The linework is clean and the design is entirely black and grey, with the lettering sitting on a plain skin background.

Lettering Geometric Other Triangle Circle Text Quote Lettering

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday, and the lane is still under three feet of drift, so the vet's van turned back at the bottom of the hill again. Dad would have laughed. He always said the sheep had better manners than the council. I have the range lit and the kettle on, and I am writing at the kitchen table because the light holds best here before the lamp needs filling.

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Found Dad's old biscuit tin in the bottom of the dresser this morning, under the spare twine. Inside was a square of card folded into a triangle, a circle drawn in biro within it, and a single line running down the middle like a fence post. Round the edges, in his square capitals, were the words MISCHIEF MANAGED. Tom wrote those on the byre door when he was nine, after he'd mucked out the whole stall by himself and wanted the world to know. Dad never rubbed them off.

On the back of the card, in Mum's looping hand, was a line I hadn't seen before: the ones that love us never truly leave us. I read it aloud to the hens, who did not argue. Then I took the paint tin out to the byre with the cold getting into my fingers, and I stood in front of that old door for a long time with the brush in my hand.

I didn't paint over it. I put the card back in the tin, slipped the tin into my coat pocket, and watched the snow go blue in the byre window. The words can stay where a nine-year-old put them.