Traditional style tattoo of a brass diving helmet on a jellyfish body with the letter N, surrounded by shells on the upper arm and shoulder.

Diving helmet jellyfish on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A brass-style diving helmet sits atop a jellyfish-like body with long trailing tentacles, and the letter N is engraved on the chest plate. Bold black outlines define the helmet, plates and tentacles, with shading in grey and muted teal and orange fills. Spiral shells and ammonite-like forms are arranged around the top of the shoulder, filling the composition.

Traditional Upper arm Shoulder Jellyfish Tentacle Shell Spiral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The helmet is still on its hook by the lamp room door, Nell, and I have stopped pretending it is only a relic. The glass throws the light round in slow turns, so the brass comes up gold, then grey, then gold again. You always said I talked to lamps. Now I talk to Father's helmet, which I suppose is progress of a sort.

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Last Tuesday a moon jelly came up on the spring tide and lodged in the gully below the landing, pale as a spoiled custard and trailing its threads. I fished it back out with the boathook and spent an hour at it. It did not thank me. It simply pulsed, open and shut, like a clerk refusing a form. When I climbed back up, the N on the breastplate was catching the sunrise as though Father had polished it that morning.

Under the west wall the rock is full of ammonites, flat coils the size of saucers, and the gulls keep dropping the smaller ones on the gallery rail. I have eleven now. Mr Thorne from the mainland offers a shilling apiece and says they would sit nicely on a windowsill. I told him they are not for sale, and he took it as an invitation to come back Thursday.

This morning I carried the helmet down to the tidal pool and set it on the sand with the glass facing the sky. The jelly was there in the shallows. It drifted under the rim and hung among the brass, trailing its threads through the little windows, as if it had found the one dry place on the coast worth visiting. I left them to it. Write soon, and tell Mother the N still stands for Nathan, whatever the sea makes of it.

Your brother, N.