Black and grey anchor tattoo with rope wrapped around the shank, shown in a traditional style on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anchor and rope on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink anchor with a rope coiled around its shank sits on the forearm, with small initials above and a numeric date below it. The anchor is drawn with fine outlines and hatched shading that gives the metal some depth, while the rope is rendered with twisted line detail. The image is in black and grey, with the skin and a plain background filling the rest of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

Keep reading

The tide was making when the old hawser parted at the Albert Dock wall, and I'm writing because I still can't get the sound of it out of my head. Mr Okafor had bought the rope secondhand from a breaker in Goole, and he swore it was sound, the way men always swear about rope. I stood on the quay with a boathook and watched the strands unlay like someone undoing a plait.

Nobody was hurt, so don't fret. The launch swung off the wall and Pete got a line on the bollard before she reached the lock gate. Afterwards we sat on the bitts with our hands black from the tar, and Pete said Dad would have laughed. Dad always reckoned an anchor was only as honest as the rope you tied to it. A bad rope tells you the truth fast, he used to say, which is more than most people manage.

So I've spent the week splicing a new eye into the length, and I keep thinking of you. Remember the box of cord under the stairs, the one with the knot Mum taught us? I've pinned the old chart to the galley wall, the one with the pencilled soundings and the date Dad first took the Kestrel out alone, the nineteenth of June. The initials he scratched into the bollard are still there, if you look.

Come up at Easter if the trains behave. Bring the photographs of the baby, and I'll show you where the splice goes.

Love, Tom

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