Traditional-style owl tattoo with yellow eyes and a small red heart, set inside an ornate oval frame on the side of the ribs.

Owl in ornate frame on ribs

Traditional · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A grey-shaded owl sits centrally inside a black-outlined oval frame with scrolled ornamentation. The owl has yellow eyes and a small red heart sits above the frame, with the rest of the linework and shading in black and grey. The photograph is taken close up on the side of the ribs, with a green top and a dark cloth visible at the edges.

Traditional Ribs Owl Frame Heart Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at the Crescent Palais dances the last waltz until the clock above the bandstand has been wound, and Mrs Dorrit has done that every night since the war. You are standing at the cloakroom hatch with a brass tag in each fist, watching the dancers drift towards the doors, and you have not yet decided whether to tell Stanley that the oval mirror over the stage has cracked again, straight through the painted owl.

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The owl was Mr Halloran's idea, painted inside its gilt frame by a sign-writer from Margate who charged him in whisky. Yellow eyes, grey feathers, and a red heart no bigger than a sixpence tucked above the scrollwork, so the girls waiting to be asked would have something to look for. Everyone said it was the hall's watchman. Nobody took that seriously until the night the pianist swore the owl blinked during Limehouse Blues.

Tonight you climb the ladder with a rag and a tin of gold size. The crack runs through the bird's left eye, and when you wipe the glass the paint comes away on your thumb, tacky and fresh, as if the sign-writer has only just stepped out. Below you, the band has packed up and the last couple are still turning slowly across the empty floor, a little out of time with the clock, which has stopped.

You come down with the rag in your pocket and say nothing to Stanley. Instead you lock the cloakroom, pocket the brass tags, and leave the stage light burning, because a watchman is no use to anyone in the dark. Next morning the owl is looking straight at the door, and the heart above the frame is a little brighter than it was.