Traditional-style black and grey tattoo of an anglerfish perched on a stack of books on the inner forearm, with a few touches of colour.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anglerfish on stacked books on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A small anglerfish with a dangling lure and a yellow eye sits atop a stack of four books. The fish is shaded in greys with bold black outlines, and the book spines carry touches of red and brown. The design is centred on the inner forearm, with a partial area of older markings cut off at the top edge of the frame.

Traditional Forearm Fish Book

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth, you will not believe what came up out of the cut at Hythe lock this morning. Tom had the net over the side for weed and hauled up a fish no bigger than a loaf, grey as slate, with a little brass-coloured lamp on a wire above its mouth. It glowed like a pub sign. He wanted to throw it back. I wanted to keep it, because it had yellow eyes that looked at me like a clerk judging a late return.

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We have been carrying the books for the Ashby reading room since April, four hundred volumes in the hold, stacked in the order Mr Pell wrote out in his ledger. The fish got in the first night through the gap by the tiller. By the second morning it had worked out that the warmest spot on the barge was the top of the atlas stack, and there it sat with its lamp swinging, turning the red and brown spines to embers whenever the light caught them.

Tom says it is a nuisance. I have started reading to it. Not the romances, because I suspect it would like them too much, but the old sea logs from the Wey boats, all written by men who believed they were the only ones who ever saw the bottom of the river. The fish listens. Or at least it does not swim off when I stop, which is near enough.

So here is the thing I am trying to tell you. Mr Pell wrote to say the reading room will close in September unless the parish finds a shed. I have not told Tom yet. I think I will let the fish carry the news, since it seems to have made itself the barge's clerk. Come up at the weekend, bring the good tea and your reading glasses, because the lamp is the only light we have after dark and I am tired of squinting at the ledger.