Flash design of a blue police box surrounded by black and white cogs and two circular emblems, one with an ornate spiral knot and one with concentric rings.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blue police box with cogs and circular emblems

Mixed · Flash

A flat, graphic design showing a blue police box with a pitched roof and window panels at the centre. It is surrounded by black and white cogs of varying sizes, with a spiral knot emblem at the top and a circular panel of concentric rings and fine lines at the bottom. The blue sits in a solid flat fill, while the gears are bold black silhouettes and white outlined shapes on a white background.

Police box Gear Cog Spiral Concentric circle Emblem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada,

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The blue box came back to the yard on Tuesday with its door hanging open and frost on the inside of the glass, and Mr Pellow swore it had been in Whitby when he sent it out in March. I have the cogs on the bench now, forty-one of them, every one stamped with a different maker's mark, and the spiral emblem from the crown is loose again. You will say I should leave it be. You always say that.

Here is the odd part. The mainspring was wound to the stop, yet the hands on the great dial read the wrong year, one hand a decade ahead of the other, as if someone had tried to set it twice and been called away. Pellow thinks a boy from the cutlery works tampered with it. I found a scrap of paper folded into the door hinge, written in pencil, that said only: Not yet, the bell must ring first.

I did not sleep. At two I went down with the lamp and set my ear to the panelled side, and the box was warm as a loaf, and under the ticking was a second ticking, slower, the kind a heart keeps when it is trying not to be noticed. I put my palm flat against the wood the way you used to press your hand to the kiln door to feel the heat. Something inside turned over, like a page.

I am writing this at the bench with the concentric ring from the bottom cog in my lap, the one with the fine lines that look as though they run on past the edge of the metal. I have decided to leave the hands as they are. If you come up on the Saturday train, bring your gauges and do not touch the spiral until I have said so.

Yours in haste, Mab