Black fine-line tattoo of two crossed oars surrounded by the letters N, E, S and W, on the inner forearm.

Crossed oars with compass points

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two crossed oars in solid black sit at the centre of the design, with the letters N, S, E and W placed at the four points of a compass around them. The oar blades are filled in with fine hatched texture, while the shafts and letters are cleanly outlined. The ink is black on pale skin, and the tattoo is framed centrally on a plain arm with a dark watch strap below it.

Forearm Compass Letter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Callum,

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The oars are still in the boathouse where you left them, crossed on the nail above the slipway, and I have stopped pretending I don't check them every morning. Your father painted the compass points on that wall the summer you were born, N for the slate roof, S for the bench, E and W for the two bollards, so anyone coming down to the water would know which way was which. Mr Haddow says the paint has gone soft at the W, and I told him it always did, because the damp comes in from the west side and always has.

You asked me last week whether I minded you taking the small boat out before the milk van. I minded. I still mind. But the bakery on Quay Street has been sending bread across the loch in the dark since before either of us was born, and Mrs Ferrie's boy has rowed it over for twenty years without losing a loaf to the spray. The trick, your father used to say, is not to watch the lights of the town but to keep the blades true and let the water tell you where it wants you.

Yesterday I found the oars on the boathouse floor, not on the nail, laid out crossed with the blades pointing four ways, and I did not move them. I stood in the doorway until the sun came up over the hill and the W went gold. Then I picked up the kettle and went back to the house, because I think you were trying to tell me something, and I think you were right to.

Mum