Black and grey realism tattoo of a city skyline with a clock tower, power lines and a pine forest over waves, across an upper arm and forearm.

City skyline, power lines and forest sleeve

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo covers the upper arm and runs down to the forearm, showing a city skyline with a tall clock tower at the top. Below it, a grid of power lines and poles crosses the middle of the arm, and the lower forearm shows dark pine trees and churning waves. The shading is smooth and tonal, with fine detail in the buildings and foliage, and the photo is taken against a plain pale wall with the subject wearing a grey striped top.

Realism Upper arm Forearm City Skyline Skyscraper Pine tree Forest Wave Sea Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The clock on the Harbour Exchange said ten to four when the wind took the north line, and by the time I had my boots on the poles the whole coast road was dark. Dad always said you could tell a lineman by how he walks the cross arm, not by his hands. I walked it the way he did, one foot in front of the other, eyes on the insulators and never on the sea.

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Below me the forest ran down to the waves in long dark rows, and the lights of the town were a smear behind the headland. Mrs Okonedo's boy was out on the boat with his father, and her kitchen window was the only one still lit at the end of Shore Lane. I could see it from the ridge pole, a small square of yellow among the firs, and I kept my eyes on it while I worked the clamp with cold fingers.

The fault was a split pine across the third span, its crown lying on the wire like a drowned animal. I hauled the saw up and cut it free an inch at a time, while the surf boomed below and the clock tower forty miles inland went on telling nobody the time. When the line sang back into life the window on Shore Lane flickered, then the porch light came on, and somewhere down the slope a boat horn answered twice.

I came down with sap on my sleeves and the sky going grey. Dad's logbook had a line for every storm since 1961, so I wrote mine beneath his: Span three cleared. Lights restored. Boat in at 5:40. Then I shut the book and went looking for breakfast, the first thing all week I had not had to climb for.