Two matching colour traditional tattoos on forearms, each showing a hand holding a lighter or a joint, with a cannabis leaf, a pink flower and a banner reading BEST or BUDS.

Matching traditional forearm tattoos, lighter and joint

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

Two forearms show a pair of matching traditional tattoos. The left arm has a hand holding a lit lighter with a flame and small sparkle marks, while the right arm has a hand holding a rolled joint, and each design includes a cannabis leaf, a pink flower and a cloud-shaped banner with the words BEST and BUDS. Bold black outlines, flat fills and bright red, green, orange and pink ink give the work a classic colour finish, and the close crop keeps both designs in focus on a neutral background.

Traditional Forearm Hand Flame Flower Banner Lettering Matching pair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had the brass lighter first, because it had been her dad's and he had died in March, and Bet had the good sense not to mention it. They were eleven, they had one lighter between them on the sea wall at Porthkerris, and the rule they made that summer was simple: whoever held the lighter got to decide what the other one had to do.

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Bet decided Nell had to swim out to the mooring buoy before the tide turned. Nell decided Bet had to climb the chapel roof and wave the flame at the fishermen until they waved back. They did both. The fishermen waved, and Mr Hosking shouted that they would be the death of him, which Bet said was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about them.

By August the lighter was running dry, and neither of them would admit it. They spent an afternoon trying to get a driftwood fire going with flint, a tin of paraffin and a sermon from the vicar's wife, and got only a smoking heap and the smell of the church hall. Nell said the lighter was finished. Bet unscrewed the base, poured in a capful of lighter fluid from the shed, and it sparked on the third try.

So they sat on the wall until the lamps came on across the harbour, passing the small flame between them, neither wanting to be the one who let it go out.