Colour tattoo of a goldfinch perched on a branch with pink wild roses, daisies and leafy sprigs, on the upper arm.

Goldfinch and wild roses on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A goldfinch perches on a branch at the centre of the design, surrounded by a pink wild rose with small buds, white daisy-like asters and sprigs of green leaves. The bird is shaded in ochre, yellow and grey with fine feather detail, and the flowers use soft pink, lilac and green washes with dark outlines. The design wraps vertically along the upper arm, with the bird in the lower middle and the flowers filling the space above and around it.

Botanical Neo-trad Upper arm Bird Rose Daisy Flower Leaves Branch Sprig Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The embankment at Hollin Halt was never meant to be a garden. The railway sprayed it every August, and every August the dog roses came back up through the cinders, pink as a cheap sweet, as if they had a grudge. For eleven years I was the one with the secateurs, cutting them back from the platform edge so nobody caught a sleeve on the thorns.

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That was the spring a goldfinch started coming to the signal box windowsill. Red face, gold bars across the wing, the sort of bird you only see on a calendar. It sat on the brass rail of the lamp post and sang a wheezing little song, then dropped into the asters old Mr Okafor had scattered along the bank before he retired. I didn't tell anyone. Telling people things only got you asked to stop.

By October the roses had gone to hips and the asters had blown to grey heads. I found the bird in the hedge one morning, feeding something to a second bird that could barely hold on to a twig. I stood there with the cutters in my hand for longer than the 7.14 needed to clear the points. That winter I left the bank alone. The area manager wrote a letter about the untidiness. I wrote one back explaining that finches eat seed and rail companies do not.

On the last train of the day the goldfinch lifted off the lamp post and went down the line after the carriages, low over the sleepers, until the lights of the next station swallowed it. I still don't know whether it knew it was leaving. I left the roses standing anyway, and the hips went red along the fence where the cinders meet the grass.