Traditional style tattoo of a banjo wrapped in a banner reading Fire and Hail, with orange, red and teal flowers, on the upper arm.

Banjo, flowers and banner on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A colour traditional tattoo of a banjo with its neck running diagonally up the arm, framed by orange, red and teal flowers with dark green leaves. A cream banner with black outlined lettering reading FIRE & HAIL wraps around the neck of the banjo. Bold black outlines, flat fills and a soft tan shading on the banjo head give the design a classic flash look.

Traditional Upper arm Flower Banner Leaves Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The banjo had spent three days on the roof of the cabin, and the damp had found its way under the skin of the head, so when you lift it down at Ebbing Lock the first strum comes out as a flat little cough. You turn the pegs anyway. Across the water a moorhen picks along the lock gate, and the lockkeeper's dog sits on the coping watching you as though you owe it money.

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The boat is called Fire & Hail, the name lettered on the bow in cream with black edges, the same letters Aunt Mags painted herself the summer she bought the hull off a scrap man in Stourport. Uncle Dennis played this banjo on the towpath for coins, always the same three tunes, and always stopped when a cyclist came close enough to hear the bell. After the funeral you kept the boat moored where he liked it, and nobody argued.

The lockkeeper's wife comes down with a jam jar of nasturtiums and a pair of spectacles she has forgotten to take off, and she asks if you'll play something before the afternoon boats come through. You tell her the head is wet. She tells you Dennis said the same thing every spring. So you tighten the hoop, tap the skin with two fingers until the note stops coughing, and play the first of his three tunes badly and loudly, to the moorhen and the dog.

When the first narrowboat noses into the chamber, its driver lifts a hand from the tiller. You lift the banjo in return, and for once the sound carries all the way down the cut.