Colour Japanese-style tattoo of pink peonies with green leaves and black and grey waves on a leg, with a grey lotus on the ankle.

Japanese peony and wave leg sleeve

Japanese · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A raised leg shows a Japanese-style sleeve. Large pink peonies with green leaves and yellow stamens sit on the lower leg, above a black and grey wave pattern with white highlights and a grey lotus on the ankle. The shading is smooth and the linework is bold, with the coloured flowers standing out against the greyscale background of the room.

Japanese Botanical Calf Ankle Peony Flower Leaf Wave Lotus

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You wake before the engine does, because the barge has learned to be quiet in the mornings and you have learned to listen for it. The *Marigold Ferris* is moored three deep below Tring lock, and the water outside the hull is the colour of pewter, lifting and folding over itself where the wind funnels down the cut. Your aunt kept peonies in tubs on the roof, pink ones the size of a fist, and every spring she swore they would be the last year they flowered for her. They never were.

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Today the water is restless. Two hire crews are shouting at each other across the lock gate about who blocked whom, and you have no patience for either of them. You take the windlass from its hook, step onto the towpath, and walk the length of the chamber with the old tarpaulin folded over your shoulder. Halfway down, a gust takes a tin of paint off the gunwale and sends it skidding into the reeds, and you laugh out loud for the first time in a week.

The lock keeper, a thin man called Denholm who has opinions about everything including weather, leans on his gate and tells you the cut will flood by Sunday. You tell him the peonies are finally budding, which makes no sense to either of you. He shrugs and hands you a cup of tea from a flask with a chipped lid.

When the gates groan open, you cut the last bloom from the roof tub with your penknife and set it on the water above the lock. The current takes it, turns it once, and pulls it under the bottom gate. You wait on the bank long enough to be sure it isn't coming back, then you go below to start the engine.