Black lettering tattoo on the outer thigh reading We're all mad here, with the words arranged in the shape of a spade.

We're all mad here lettering in a spade shape

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a black ink tattoo on the outer thigh, with the words We're all mad here set inside a spade shape. The lettering uses mixed letterforms, with ornate flourishes on the top line and a stem of stacked capitals below the spade. The skin tone and shorts are visible at the top of the frame, and the background is softly lit indoors.

Lettering Thigh Spade Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ace of spades came off the bottom of the deck on a wet Tuesday, which Mrs Pell always said was the only day a sensible man ought to lose money. I was dealing for her in the back room above the fishmonger's on Lamb Street, and the man in the grey overcoat had been losing steadily since eleven, smiling as though each hand was a joke he'd heard before.

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When the pot finally reached forty pounds he laid the card face up and tapped it with one finger. "Do you know why the spades are the only suit with a point on top?" he asked. I said I didn't, and I didn't care to. "Because they're the ones that cut," he said. "Everything else just sits there looking pretty." Then he leaned across the baize and said, quite kindly, "We're all mad here, you know. The trick is to be the one who admits it first."

Mrs Pell came in at midnight with her shawl half off and found me sweeping up a scatter of chips. The grey man's chair was empty and the table was bare except for the spade, which had turned itself over. On its back someone had written in pencil, in a neat hand, a single word: Tuesday. She never asked how it got there. She only asked whether I had shuffled.

I still shuffle with it in my apron pocket. On wet Tuesdays it is warmer than any card has a right to be, and I have never once been the one to admit anything first.