Vertical column of dark Roman numerals with a small swallow silhouette in the middle, tattooed down the centre of a person's upper back.

Vertical Roman numerals with a swallow on a back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical column of dark Roman numerals runs down the centre of the upper back, with a small solid silhouette of a swallow sitting between the lower numerals. The serif letters are set in a single straight line with even spacing, and the ink is a dark blue-black with clean edges. The soft, warm lighting and shallow focus keep the attention on the tattoo against the surrounding skin and blonde hair.

Lettering Back Roman numeral Numeral Swallow Bird Serif lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sundial came up out of the bramble in March, the same week the swallows returned to the stable roof, and I thought of you before anything else. Your grandfather's father set the stone in the lawn in 1913, or so Mrs Oakes told me over the gate, and the Roman numerals were cut into the rim by a mason from Ledbury who charged two shillings and a bottle of cider. You will remember how the ivy had all but swallowed it.

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I scraped the moss from the face with a butter knife and found the hours still legible, the gnomon bent but true. Between the old numerals and the blank stretch of stone where the year should go, someone had scratched a tiny bird with a forked tail. Mrs Oakes swore it was the mason's mark. I have decided it was a message to whoever came next, the way a swallow always comes back to the same eaves.

The new date went in last Tuesday. Tom Pryce, who does the churchyard lettering, asked what I wanted under the bird, and I told him to start from the swallow and work outward. He cut MMVI in the same plain serif, the strokes sharp in the cold light, and it looks as though it has always been there. It means nothing to the sundial and everything to the house.

Come down at Easter. The sun reaches the stone a little after eleven, and the shadow falls exactly across the bird. The swallows will be nesting above the back door by then, and you can tell me which of us was right about the cider.