Colour tattoo of eight emblem-style icons in two rows on the inner forearm, each with bold black outlines and soft colour washes.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Eight coloured emblem icons on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

The photograph shows eight emblem-style icons arranged in two rows across the inner forearm, including a droplet, a flame, a spiral, a gem, a leaf-like shape and several geometric badges. Each motif has bold black outlines with soft shading and loose colour washes in grey, blue, yellow, orange, red, purple, green and multicoloured hexagons. The background is out of focus, with a yellow and green flag and a shelf of papers.

Forearm Emblem Badge Droplet Flame Spiral Gem Leaf Hexagon Icon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tokens came out of the old sweet tin the Thursday after the bass player left for Leeds with his cornet wrapped in a pillowcase. Dolores laid them on the cloakroom counter like a hand of patience. Eight brass discs, each one a different colour: a grey stone, a blue drop, a yellow bloom, a hexagon sampler of every shade the hall owned, a purple thing nobody could name, an orange whorl, a red flame and a green leaf with its spines out. Each one had been won on the floor by somebody who was now dead or living in Blackpool.

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The rule was pinned above the radiator in her looping hand. Dance all eight styles in a single night, one tune apiece, and the last token, the spiral, was yours to keep. Nobody had managed it since the year the roof leaked onto the rumba. My nephew Ray, who could not keep time to a kettle, said he would do it before the last waltz. Everyone laughed, and then, because it was Ray, they stopped laughing and started betting.

He lost the foxtrot to a woman in a green cardigan and nearly fell over during the tango. By half ten the floor had thinned to a few stubborn couples and Ray, who kept counting under his breath and kept getting the beat wrong in a way that somehow looked right. When the band slid into the jive he grabbed my hand, though I had not agreed to be his partner, and somewhere in the third chorus I realised he was no longer thinking about the steps at all.

At the final bar the spiral came off Dolores's palm and into his. It was still warm from the radiator. Ray held it up to the lamp, grinning, and asked me whether I thought the others would be jealous. I said the others had had their chance, and the band struck up the last waltz for whoever was left.