Black and white flash design of a shield crest containing a bird, a pentagram, a TARDIS, a lattice panel and the text 221B, above a banner reading NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST.

Fictional house crest with TARDIS and 221B

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black and white shield crest split into several panels. The panels show a bird, a pentagram, a blue police box style TARDIS and a diamond lattice, with a large H and the number 221B across the centre. A curled banner beneath reads NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST. The design uses bold solid blacks and fine white linework on a black background.

Blackwork Crest Shield Bird Pentagram Tardis Lattice Banner Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody comes back for umbrellas in November, so by the end of the month the shelves behind my counter at Harrowgate Cross are crowded with them, hooked by their crooks like a row of tired herons. I have given most of them names. The one with the broken spoke is Mr Pell. The good black one with the silver handle I keep for people who look as though the weather has already had the better of them.

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The drawing came in a biscuit tin at the bottom of the bin marked Miscellaneous, folded small and damp at one corner. Somebody had sketched a shield on the back of a platform ticket, split into panels with a pen that had run dry halfway through. A bird in one square, a star inside a circle, a blue police box in another, a diamond lattice down one side, and across the middle a large H with 221B pressed in underneath like a door number. A banner curled beneath it: NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST. The lines were fine and careful and the blacks were filled in hard, the work of someone who had been told to sit still and had done it with great spite.

I pinned it above the umbrellas, where the lamp catches the white ink. Most people who stop at the counter ask after gloves or phones. Last Tuesday a woman stood under it for a long while, then asked whether anyone had handed in a map. I told her we had timetables. She said timetables would have to do, and she took the 16:42 to nowhere in particular with a folded copy tucked in her pocket.

That evening I unhooked Mr Pell, dried his spokes with my cardigan sleeve and hung him back in his place. The crest stayed where it was, and the umbrellas went on turning slowly on their hooks, waiting for somebody to come back for them.