Black ink tattoo of the numerals 9 and 3/4 on the inner wrist, set in a bold serif style.

Nine and three quarters on a wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a black tattoo showing the numerals 9 and 3/4 on the inner wrist, with the fraction bar running diagonally between the 3 and the 4. The lettering has bold, tapered strokes in solid black ink with no shading. The background is blurred skin and a dark area at the edges, with the tattoo centred in the frame.

Lettering Forearm Number Numeral

Find an artist for this

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

You arrive at Little Mendle with a cardboard case tied shut with washing line, twenty minutes before the 4.10, and the ticket clerk tells you there is no platform for the 4.10 to Carrow Hall. He says it without looking up from his crossword. Nine, he says, and then, after a long pause in which you hear the kettle start to sing in the back room, nine and a half, if you're lucky.

Keep reading

You walk the length of the brick wall anyway. Pigeons, an empty cigarette packet on a bench, the smell of coal smoke settling like wet wool. Between the ninth post and the tenth there is a gap no wider than a coat, and in it stands a fence panel painted green so many times that its edges have softened. Your father used to say the railways had never once told a child the truth. You lean your shoulder against the panel and it gives, the way a door gives when someone on the other side has been expecting you.

On the far side there is no sunlight and no platform, only a train the colour of a plum, breathing steam with the patience of an animal that has waited years for a passenger who will not be frightened. A guard in a cap leans out and holds up three fingers, then turns his hand a quarter round and holds up one, the way a man might show you a measurement he expects you to remember.

You climb aboard with the case bumping against your knees. Behind you the panel swings shut with the soft, practical click of a gate that has never once been locked, and out on the real platform the kettle finally stops singing.