Fine line tattoo of a paint swatch card reading TATTONE and 5K1 N on the upper arm, beneath a grey sleeve.

Paint swatch card tattoo on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A small outlined tattoo of a paint swatch card sits on the outer upper arm, with a tall rectangle above a white and grey label. The label carries the bold word TATTONE and the code 5K1 N in black lettering. The thin black linework is clean and even, and the pale fill reads as near white to light grey, with the grey sleeve and skin framing the design.

Fine line Lettering Upper arm Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dorothy Ferrars had matched paint at Coppins Decorating Supplies on Holderness Road for thirty-one years, and she could tell a lie from the colour of a customer's hands on the counter. So when Mr Oduya came in with a scrap of tin from his late father's boat and asked for the grey that wasn't grey, she didn't reach for the fan deck. She reached for the drawer under the till, the one with no label, and took out a card she had printed herself in 1988 and never shown anyone.

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The card was a tall pale rectangle with a white label at its foot. She had typed TATTONE across the top as a joke for the girls on the counter, and under it a code she had worked out with a pencil and a ruler: 5K1 N. Five for the winters the boat had sat in the Humber mud. K for the colour of the water at slack tide. One for the single good coat her father had put on her himself. N for nothing, which was what the yard had charged him to lift her out.

Mr Oduya held the card against the tin for a long time while rain started on the shutter. That's it, he said, and his voice went strange. Dorothy told him it was on no fan deck and never would be, and that she could mix it only if he brought the boat's name in and let her see the hull for herself. He nodded at the lino.

She mixed the paint that afternoon in the back room, where nobody watched, stirring until the grey looked like a slipway after the tide had gone out. When he came back she handed over the pot and the card, and kept the drawer shut on everything else.