Neo-traditional tattoo on a calf of a grey-shaded typewriter key cluster with letters, framed by orange flowers, green leaves and black scrollwork in an oval.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Typewriter keys in a flowered oval on a calf

Neo-trad · Calf · Mixed · Photo

The design shows a cluster of grey-shaded typewriter keys with raised letters, including V, O, I, C, E and S, set inside an oval frame of black scrollwork. Orange flowers with teal centres and green leaves surround the lower and upper edges of the oval. The keys are rendered with soft grey shading and bold outlines, while the flowers and leaves use flat, saturated colour, and the piece sits centred on the leg.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Palais smells of Brylcreem and spilt lemonade by eight, and you have been at the corner table since seven with the old Imperial, typing programme cards because Mr Hale says the printer in Scarborough charges too much. The keys are older than you are. The V sticks, so you learn to strike it twice, and the O has a rough edge that bites the card and leaves a grey ring like a thumbprint.

Keep reading

Len Ashworth comes over during the interval with a fistful of request slips, soft from being held. Most of them ask for the same waltz and all of them say please. He drops them by your elbow and says, 'Make them legible, love, I can't read my own handwriting.' You take the top slip under the lamp. It names a girl from the Co-op and a foxtrot, and beneath that, pressed so hard the pencil has torn the paper, someone has written VOICES and underlined it twice.

You type the cards in order while the band tunes up. Requests are mostly about who is dancing with whom, but this one feels like it is about the room itself, a man wanting to hear the people he used to talk over. You set the slip aside and type the rest. When Len calls the last number, the floor is nearly empty and the trombones are packed into their cases, and the card is still at your elbow, the only one you never handed in.

You hold it up to the bulb before you put your coat on. The ink has bled through the thin card in a faint ring for every key, so the word shows on the back in reverse, S, E, C, I, O, V, and for a moment it reads the way a voice does when it is heard from the other side of a wall.

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