Realism black and grey tattoo of a clock face with Roman numerals, gears and hands on the inner forearm, with soft smoky shading behind it.

Clock face and gears on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large clock face with Roman numerals sits on the inner forearm, with exposed gears and hands set in the centre. The linework is fine and the shading is smooth and highly detailed, with soft smoke-like grey washes behind the dial. The image is almost entirely black and grey, with warm skin tones showing through, and the tattoo fills the frame against a blurred indoor background.

Realism Forearm Clock Clock face Gear Roman numeral Clock hand Pocket watch Smoke

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The night the tram depot flooded, Edwin Pask carried the church clock's spare movement up four flights of Lamb Street on his shoulder, because nobody else in Salford would touch it with the water still rising in the cellars. His daughter Maud held the lantern. Every few steps the brass wheels knocked together inside the oilcloth and she said, quite calmly, that it sounded like the thing was counting them.

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We set it on the kitchen table among the teacups. My father had a rule that no clock is repaired in a hurry, and so for three hours we did nothing but look. He unpinned the back plate and showed me how the escape wheel tooth had worn to a little shoulder, the way a stair dips where everyone steps. Outside, the bells of St Stephen's struck eleven and then went quiet, because the ringers had gone home to bail their own floors.

He found the fault near dawn, a hairline crack in the mainspring arbor that would have let the whole train run away in a single gust. He swore softly, then laughed, then asked me to hold the smallest screwdriver steady while he filed a new seat for the pin. I remember the grey light coming up over the chimney pots and how the hands, once we set them, pointed at the correct hour without a flicker of doubt.

The flood went down by noon. The church clock was back on its tower by Sunday, and Maud still tells people that a clock keeps the time for everybody who is awake to read it.