Black-ink musical staff tattoos with notes wrapping around a forearm, in fine line style, placed near the wrist and above the elbow.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Musical staff bands on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two bands of black-ink musical staves with notes wrap around the forearm, one near the wrist and one closer to the elbow. The linework is thin and clean, with solid note heads, stems and small clef details. The image is in black and grey with no colour ink, and the forearm fills most of the frame against a blue t-shirt.

Fine line Forearm Music staff Musical note Band

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The lock at Hatherby has been playing up since the spring rains, so we've been tied up below it four days waiting for the water to drop. Dad would have cursed the whole time. I've mostly been listening. Eli, the lock-keeper's boy, works the paddle gear with a hum under his breath, and the gate wheel answers him with a squeal that lands right on the beat. I asked him what the tune was. He shrugged and said it was the lock's, and his gran's before that.

So I borrowed the pencil from the shipping book and wrote it down. You'd laugh, Tom, at the lines I ruled across the back page of the toll ledger, five to a band, the clef drawn badly and then less badly. Eleven notes in all, the last one long, which he holds until the gate settles. I hummed it all afternoon until Ruth threw a boot at the hatch.

Here is the odd part. When I played it back to Eli on the penny whistle he went quiet and said his gran had always told him the tune had two halves, and the second half was lost when the old lock was rebuilt. I'd only written down what I heard. But the eleven notes end exactly where his hand comes off the windlass, and I think the missing half is just the water going down.

We go through on the morning fall. I'm keeping the ledger page folded small in my coat pocket. Come and find us at Hatherby when you're back from Gloucester, and we'll sing the gate shut together, badly, in harmony.

Love, Nell