Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a gold pocket compass with blue daisies and green scrollwork on a forearm.

Compass and daisies on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A gold pocket compass with a grey-shaded compass rose and a red-tipped needle sits at the centre, framed by pale blue daisies with orange centres and green acanthus-style scrollwork. The compass case has bold black outlines and warm gold shading that gives it a sense of depth, while the daisies and leaves use flatter colour with soft highlights. The design runs vertically up the forearm and fills the frame against a plain light background.

Neo-trad Forearm Compass Pocket watch Daisy Flower Scrollwork Leaves Compass rose

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

I found it on a Tuesday, wedged under a clump of daisies on the far side of the dyke, where the grass had been cut and nobody had thought to look. The lid was stiff with mud, and I had to work my thumbnail under the rim while the church clock across the fields struck four. Inside, the card had gone soft at the edges, but the needle still trembled to north as if it had been waiting for someone to ask it the way.

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Dad had been surveyor to the drainage board for twenty-two years, and he had never once walked a field without it in his waistcoat. When the water came over the Cutter Bridge road in March, he went out in the boat to pull a farmer's heifers off the mud and came home without his coat, and without the compass. He said nothing about it at tea. He just set his cup down very carefully each evening, as if it might tip.

I took it up to the house in my cardigan pocket and laid it on the oilcloth beside the wireless. He turned it over twice, his big thumb sliding across the glass, and then he gave a short laugh that was almost a cough. "Still pointing home," he said. "Silly old thing." I asked him what he meant, and he tapped the glass, where the needle had swung round to the window, towards the dyke, towards the road that ran out to the coast.

"It never did know where north was," he said. "It only knew where I'd been standing." He closed the lid and pushed it across the table to me. I still have it. The daisies on the case have worn down to a pale blue, and their orange centres have faded to the colour of weak tea, but every morning I lift the lid and check which way the town lies from here.