Black and grey photograph of a man's forearm with a tangled abstract linework tattoo that includes musical notes and staff lines, with his hand holding a striped tie.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Musical notes and tangled lines on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph shows a man's forearm, cropped below the chin, with a tattoo of loose, tangled black lines that appear to form staff lines and scattered musical notes. The linework covers the forearm from the wrist towards the elbow, with some solid black shapes near the lower edge. The composition is tightly framed on the arm, hand and striped tie against a plain pale background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Michael,

Keep reading

The score for the Whit Friday march came back from the damp in a terrible state. Mr Pell laid the sheets out on the chapel floor on Sunday and we stood round them like mourners, trying to find where the cornets came in. Water had got into the folder when the roof leaked over the stores, and the lines had bled into each other, so every stave looked like a fence somebody had knocked flat. The notes were still there, little black heads scattered through the wreckage, but nobody could say which belonged to which bar.

Pell wanted to cancel. Old Jack Hepple said we would march regardless, and for once the men agreed with him. Eighteen of us stood at the top of Front Street on Friday with the sun coming through the smoke, and when the signal came we simply began, trusting our fingers and the lad beside us. Half the time I was sure we had lost the tune altogether. Then the drums came in exactly where they should, and the rest of us found our way back to it like sheep finding a gate.

I have thought about that more than I expected. Nobody on the pavement knew the music was wrong. They heard the tune, which is all the tune ever was. Your dad never read a note in his life and he played the euphonium better than any man in the Lodge.

Come home for the gala in July if the trains allow it. Bring the good shoes, not the London ones.

Your loving mam, Ellen

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