Traditional-style colour tattoo of a black and white striped lighthouse with a red light and swirling blue waves inside a porthole frame, on the forearm.

Lighthouse and waves in a porthole frame

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A striped black and white lighthouse stands against a red sky with a pale beam of light, all set inside an oval porthole frame with black dots. Blue waves with white crests and curled swirls fill the lower part of the frame. Bold black outlines, flat red and blue fills and soft shading give it a classic, graphic look.

Traditional Forearm Lighthouse Wave Sea Sky

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The relief boat was a day late, and by the third morning Mags Tulloch had counted the paraffin twice and the tins of peas three times. She climbed the iron stairs with a rag in her fist and found the lamp burning low, its glass smoked grey on one side. Nobody had trimmed the wick since Tuesday. Her husband Alec had never once forgotten it, not in twenty-six winters.

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Outside, the sea ran in long blue humps, each one curling white at the top like the ends of a barber's ribbon. Through the glass she watched the sky go from red to orange over the reef, and the beam swung out across it, pale and steady, pointing at nothing but water. Alec's pipe was still on the sill where he had left it. The skipper had come up from the landing with his cap in his hands, and Mags had known before he spoke.

She trimmed the wick. Her hands knew the job better than her head did. She cleaned the glass with newspaper and vinegar, then climbed to the gallery where the wind pulled at her hair. Far out, a trawler's lights wavered, and she followed them until they steadied and turned for the gap in the rocks.

When the lamp burned bright she took the logbook down and wrote in her square hand: Wick trimmed. Light burning. Keeper present. Then she underlined the word present twice and went down to put the kettle on for two.