Black lettering tattoo reading 'for a minute there, I lost myself' in a typewriter-style font on an upper arm, shown in a close-up beside a photo of a person in a knitted jumper.

Typewriter-style quote tattoo on an upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A diptych with a full-length view of a person in a dark knitted jumper, with a small black tattoo on the upper arm, beside a close-up of a line of text. The close-up shows the words 'for a minute there, I lost myself' in a solid black, typewriter-style font with even, crisp linework. The palette is black and skin tones, with a plain pale background and soft, even lighting.

Lettering Upper arm Quote Text Word Typewriter font

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ivy Pargeter had kept the Olivetti under a tea towel for thirty-one years, and when Danny from the council carried the boxes up the stairs, she made him set it on the kitchen table before anything else. "Mind the e," she said. "It sticks when the damp gets in."

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The sentence came off the roller on a wet Tuesday in March 1974. She had been writing to her sister in Leeds, the way she did every week, and the line simply came up while she hunted for the carbon. For a minute there, I lost myself. She tore the strip free, meant to bin it, and put it in the drawer with the stamps instead, where it stayed under the rubber bands for decades.

Danny asked whether she wanted it boxed for the charity shop. She said no. She pressed the space bar twice, listened to the hammers clack and settle, and typed the alphabet slowly, one key at a time, the way you'd count out change. Dust from the old ribbon drifted onto the lino like flour.

Her sister's answer came back by return. Mavis had written only, Did you find it, then? Ivy never replied to that. She wrote instead that the weather had been very fine, which was true, and she never once mentioned the sentence, which she still thinks was the wiser way to type a thing.