Colour tattoo on a forearm of a yellow cartoon character with braided hair inside an oval frame, a lemon slice and green leaves, with script lettering curving around the edge.

Cartoon character and lemon with lettering

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A bold cartoon character with yellow skin, braided hair and round glasses is shown as a bust inside an oval frame. A lemon slice and green leaves sit at the bottom, and curved script lettering runs around the outside of the oval. The thick black outlines and flat, bright fills in red, yellow, orange, blue and green give it a traditional colour look, photographed straight on against grey fabric.

Traditional Neo-trad Forearm Cartoon character Leaves Lettering Oval frame Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has got under the awning again, so you stand at the edge of Harrow Street market with a cardboard tray of lemons and wait for someone to ask you something daft. Mr Okonedo from the fish stall calls it your sour face. You call it accuracy. Nobody buys a lemon in the wet unless they have a reason, and the reasons are usually a cold, a gin, or a grudge against a recipe.

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Your uncle Desmond ran the stall before you, in a waxed jacket with his grey plaits tied off with string and round spectacles that fogged up every time he shouted at the council. He had a saying for every customer. Make sure the juice is worth the squeeze, he'd say, handing over a lemon with the face of a man passing judgement on the whole street. He said it so often that he had the words printed on the paper bags, and the printer in Croydon charged him twice for the order.

On the last Saturday before he retired to the coast, a girl in a yellow raincoat came to the stall and asked for the best lemon. You told her they were all the same. Desmond reached past you, took one from the bottom of the tray with the thick skin and the soft spot, and pressed it into her palm. Squeeze it, he said. If it fights you, put it back.

She squeezed. Nothing came out but a bitter drip and a startled laugh. Then she bought the whole tray anyway, and Desmond gave you a look over his glasses that said he had known she would.