Pencil sketch of a double helix built from bicycle chain links, with the word DNA written in rough capitals beneath it.

DNA double helix made from bicycle chain

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a double helix, with each strand made of bicycle chain links and cross rungs joining the two sides. The linework is fine and sketchy, with light hatching on the chain and shading that suggests metal. The word DNA is written in loose, rough capitals along the bottom of the image on a plain white background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Don't pull the link with your fingers, Danny, you'll bend the pin and then we're both sorry. Use the tool. There, that's the one. Now look at what Mrs Hollis brought in. The chain lay across the bench like something dragged out of a canal, rust bloomed along one run where the water had got into the links, and I could smell the damp coming off it before I'd even lifted the lid on the box.

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Her husband had built that old roadster with two chains. One drove the pedals and the other he'd fitted as a spare, and rather than hang it on a nail he wound it round the first so the pair ran side by side, crossing every few inches on little pins he'd filed himself. He said one strand would carry the load if the other gave, and that was the whole theory. Twenty-one years on, when the lower run snapped on the Otley road, the upper one held her up the hill and home without so much as a skip. She told me that herself, sat on that stool where you're sitting, and she didn't cry, she just rubbed the grease off her thumb.

So we're not replacing the pair. We're cleaning them, one link at a time, and we're matching the crossings so they sit the way he set them. Count the cross pins as you go. Forty-one, last time I looked.

When the last one was seated, she picked the chain up in both hands, turned the crank once, and watched the two strands wind through the sprocket together. Then she handed me a biscuit tin full of coins, which was more than the job was worth, and said, keep the spare, love, you'll need it.