Watercolour-style compass rose with an anchor below it, in blue, purple and black ink on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass and anchor on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A compass rose sits within a blue watercolour wash, with an anchor hanging below it on a vertical line that extends down the limb. Black linework defines the compass points and the anchor, while purple and blue splashes add a loose, painterly effect. A small pink rose is partly visible at the bottom left of the frame against a dark background.

Forearm Compass Compass rose Anchor Rose Watercolour splash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The compass you left in the caravan is still swinging on its nail above the sink, and every time the wagon takes a corner it points at the bread bin instead of north. Mum says leave it be. I've been using it to settle arguments about which way the Waltzer faces, which is a poor use of a navigator's kit, but Dad would have laughed.

The fair came into Hexham on Tuesday with the lights already wrong. Someone had painted the Ferris wheel's gondolas the blue of the harbour at Whitby, the colour you wanted for the sea wall mural, and the cut-out mermaid at the coconut shy has lost her tail to the wind. Jack Corrigan's boys strung the bunting between the rides, and the stall sign still reads ANCHOR and COMPASS in the letters Dad painted in 1998, bright under the wet.

Here's the thing I wanted to tell you. On Thursday a lad at the coconut shy asked me for a rose on his arm, and I said we did no roses, only ride tickets. He came back an hour later with a picture of a compass set in a splash of blue watercolour and asked if I could do an anchor hanging under it instead. I said I'd try. I've got your steady hand for lines and your nerve for the bottom of a chain, so I borrowed the needles from Mr Corrigan's van and did it on the back step, and it was the first thing I've inked since you went.

Write back. The needle still sticks left after Carlisle, and I want to know whether that's the magnet or the road.

Love, Nell