Traditional tattoo of a black and yellow compass rose with pink flowers, green leaves and an anchor, on the upper arm.

Compass rose with anchor and flowers on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A compass rose with a black and white eight-point star sits at the centre, framed by a yellow ring and a yellow anchor rope. Two pink flowers with yellow centres and dark green leaves surround it, with yellow and green clouds or waves at the lower edge. Bold black outlines and solid fills dominate, and the photograph is taken at a slight angle on the arm.

Traditional Upper arm Compass Compass rose Anchor Flower Leaves Cloud Wave Rope

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brass compass above the proving cupboard had been running fast since Christmas, Nessa said, and I should stop trusting it. She said this every morning at half three, while I stood on the step stool squinting at its painted rose and the flour settled over everything like a second skin on the shelves. The bakery on Quay Street smelled of yeast and scorched sugar before there was any light in the sky, and the only clock that mattered was the one in her head, which never once ran fast.

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We worked in the cold hour before the harbour woke. She shaped the tin loaves while I scored the batch rounds with a razor, and the radio on the windowsill played the shipping forecast in a voice like warm water. Forties, Dover, Wight. Each time the names came through she would stop kneading, look toward the door, and tell me which way the boats were going out. She had spent thirty years learning the sea from a kitchen and claimed it was the same work, only with more patience required.

On the last Friday of March she set a tin on the bench and slid the compass across to me. The needle had stopped. It pointed straight at the oven door, which she said was the only true north a baker ever needed. I laughed and told her it was broken. She only shrugged, pulled the first tray from the heat, and let the sun come up grey over the anchor rope of the harbour wall, the loaves steaming on the rack in neat, golden rows.