Pencil flash sketch of a Roman numeral clock with a rose and two lettered banners, with a pocket watch and beaded chain, in traditional style.

Clock, rose and banners sketch

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil and ink line drawing of a clock face with Roman numerals, set in front of an open rose and overlapped by two curled banners carrying lettering. A small pocket watch hangs from a beaded chain at the upper left, and the chain loops across the lower half of the composition. The linework is black on pale paper with shading only in a few areas, so the image is black and grey.

Traditional Neo-trad Lettering Clock Pocket watch Rose Banner Roman numeral Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift at Calder House had been out since Tuesday, so Joyce Pelling took the stairs to the ninth floor with a tin of shortbread under one arm and her late husband's pocket watch swinging on its chain. She counted landings the way she counted tablets, out loud and without hurry. Down in the lobby the big clock had stopped at ten to four, the same as it had since the council painted the stairwells grey.

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Mr Okafor on nine had asked for the watch back. He wanted it for his grandson, who was training to fix things at the college and had written to say so in careful capitals. Joyce had not agreed to anything yet. She held the watch up against the landing window, where the rain made the car park lights swim, and wondered whether a thing could be given away without also being lost.

The roses in the planter by the walkway had come up pale and stubborn through the concrete, and every spring someone threatened to pull them out. Joyce stopped to look at them. Her mind went to the clock's brass rim, where the words had been worn almost smooth by a century of coats brushing past: time waits, for no one. Nobody had ever fixed that clock. Perhaps nobody had needed to.

At number 47 she knocked, held out the tin, then the watch. "It runs slow," she said. "Like everything in this building. Set it by the lobby and it'll come right." Mr Okafor took it, turned it over twice, and thanked her. Joyce went back down the stairs without waiting for the lift, listening for a sound from the clock that she knew she would not hear.