Watercolour-style tattoo of purple and pink flowers, three black birds and vertical script on the side of the ribs.

Watercolour flowers, birds and script on ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A vertical design of purple, pink and blue watercolour-style flowers runs down the side of the ribs, with soft dark splatter marks around them. Three solid black birds sit in flight above the flowers, and the words family, faith, trust and friends are written in thin black script down the middle. The colour is vivid and the composition follows the curve of the body from top to bottom.

Botanical Lettering Ribs Flower Bird Script Family Faith Friend Watercolour

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hush now, and mind the lamp, because the wind off the fen takes half of what I say. That wagon of the Hollis Show has no paint on its left side above the back wheel, and you may ask why, and I will tell you, though the wheel has heard it more times than I have. The flowers were there first. The birds came after.

Keep reading

Ada Coyle painted the boards that summer with a tin of watercolour cakes she'd bought in Clacton for two shillings, and she wet them with a cracked saucer of rainwater. Violet, rose and a blue like skimmed milk. She painted them across the wagon where the family slept, so that whenever the Hollises woke they saw petals first. Every night she wrote a word in thin black ink down the middle of the board: family, faith, trust, friends. Four words for the four of them who kept the show going, Mother Hollis with her ledger, the boy Teddy who fed the bears, Sol who swallowed fire, and Ada herself with her paint on her sleeves.

Then came the November gale. It tore the tarpaulin off the big top and smashed the lamp on the caravan step, and a man from Norwich arrived with a bank draft and a wish to buy the lot. Mother Hollis said no. The show would not be sold while there was a single pony to walk. So they walked the ponies through the night in the mud, Teddy singing to keep them calm, and Sol carried the lantern in his teeth because his hands were torn. Ada drew three birds in charcoal on the board, and when the dawn came grey she brushed them in black, because black was the only paint left in the tin.

The sale fell through. Ada says the birds did it. Teddy says it was his sums and the man's bad arithmetic. You may believe which you like. But look up at the board, where the birds are still lifting off the petals, and you will see the ink has never been painted over.