Small solid black mute speaker icon with a cross, tattooed behind a person's ear.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mute speaker icon behind the ear

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A small solid black tattoo of a speaker icon with a cross beside it, placed directly behind the ear. The shapes are filled with black ink and have crisp edges, with no shading or greys visible. The photo is a close side view of the ear and hair against a plain skin background.

Other Cross Icon

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tannoy at Hollin Bridge had been hissing since the Tuesday an engineer from the regional office dropped his tea on the amplifier, and by the Friday the only thing it gave out was a sound like a kettle left on for too long. I was the night supervisor, so the job of ringing the replacement part through to Leeds fell to me, along with the job of standing in the booking hall at ten past four while the 0410 freight thundered through and every glass in the ticket office rattled in sympathy.

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The control panel sat beside the window, a grey box with a row of tired switches. Under the one marked PA someone had stuck a little printed speaker with a cross beside it, the kind of thing a manager orders by the hundred and nobody reads. I pressed it. The hiss stopped, and the silence that followed was so complete I could hear the wall clock. Nobody on the platform looked up. The four people waiting for the first service sat on their bags and went on looking at their phones, and it occurred to me that a station only ever announces things because it expects somebody to be listening.

Alf Brennan came through the side door at half five with his flask and his hi-vis, forty-one years on the railway and the last of the old porters. He stood by the panel, read the little cross, and said that the trouble with a mute button was that it never told you what you had muted. I said I had muted a fault. He said that was what everyone said before they muted their mothers. Then he went out to the platform and I heard him call the 0612 in, not through the speakers, just his own voice carrying down the cold concourse, saying Carlisle, doors open, mind the gap.

I left the switch where it was. When the cleaner, Ruth, came in to mop the tiles she asked why it was so quiet, and I told her it was the only honest hour we had.