Pencil sketch of the word Wanderlust in script, with mountain peaks above the letters and a compass rose beside them, drawn on torn paper over wood.

Wanderlust script with mountains and compass

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of the word Wanderlust written in a flowing hand, with a row of mountain peaks sketched above the letters. A detailed compass rose sits to the right of the word, with shaded points and a central circle. The drawing is in graphite greys on a pale torn sheet of paper placed on a wooden surface.

Lettering Fine line Wanderlust Script Mountain Compass Compass rose Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost had got into the rhubarb again when Mum rang to say Uncle Teddy's house in Keswick was being cleared, and would I come for the box marked GARDEN. I drove up with the heater roaring and the wipers losing their argument with the sleet.

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The box held trowels gone orange with rust, a packet of sweet pea seed dated 1974, and a brass compass in a leather case worn pale at the hinge. Tucked under the lid was a postcard of the Dolomites, unsigned, postmarked Bolzano, with a pencil line under one peak. Teddy had walked out of this garden at nineteen with a rucksack and a map he never once folded properly. He sent postcards for thirty years and never came back for the apples.

I took the compass home to Hebden Bridge and set it on the potting bench. The needle wandered, then settled north-north-west, towards the wall where the old espalier pears had died. I dug where it pointed. Under the clay, a tin of seed packets had rotted to pulp, but one clump of sweet pea had kept on living, pale and thin, reaching for light that wasn't there.

I sowed a row of peas along that wall, true to the needle, and wrote the date on a lolly stick. Then I pinned the postcard above the bench, peak side out, so the mountain could look at the garden for once.