Colour tattoo of a cartoon house with a red chimney lifted by a bunch of lobed, multicoloured balloons on the forearm.

Cartoon house lifted by colourful balloons

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a two-storey cartoon house with a red chimney, grey roof, yellow and green walls and a red door, hanging from a cluster of rounded balloons in purple, pink, orange, yellow and teal. Black outlines define the house, balloons and the long thin strings that join them. The design is set against bare skin and is centred on the forearm, with the balloons at the top and the house at the lower right.

Neo-trad Forearm Balloon House Cartoon Chimney String

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The house on Lark Street went up on a Tuesday, a few minutes past two in the morning. I know the time because I was driving the night 9 past the gasworks and had just glanced at the clock above the windscreen when the chimney appeared over the back wall, red as a pillar box and quite out of place against the orange sky.

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Earlier that night, at the stop outside the bakery, Mrs Winifred Hale had climbed on with a fistful of balloons from the market stall and asked me to hold them while she found her purse. She'd paid in coppers, counting them twice, then took the balloons back and sat in the front seat talking about her late husband's fondness for the sea. At Lark Street she got off, and I watched her go up her path in her slippers, the balloons bumping against the porch light like they were impatient to be off.

Now the whole cluster hung above the roofline, purple and pink and orange, that powder teal you only see on old sweet wrappers, and their strings ran down thin as fishing line to the guttering at each corner. I pulled in at the kerb and gave the horn a short tap, the way you do for a late fare. A bathroom light came on. Mrs Hale leaned out in her dressing gown and called down that she'd only be two minutes, she needed to fetch the cat. Then the house gave a slow shrug and lifted off its foundations, front door swinging, a lamp still burning in the kitchen.

I didn't mention it at the depot. At half past three I drove back along Lark Street, and the road was empty except for one teal balloon snagged on the bus shelter, its string still trailing. I took it home and tied it to the handle of the kettle, where it bobbed gently every time I filled it.