Black line flash sheet of ornate paisley motifs, mandala roundels, a lantern, an elephant and a floral border, shown on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Paisley, mandala and elephant flash sheet

Black and grey · Flash

A flash sheet of ornamental designs drawn in black fine linework on a white background. It includes several paisley motifs, circular mandala medallions, a lantern, a decorated elephant, a lotus-like bloom and a floral border strip along the bottom. The designs are arranged separately with no shading or colour, so each motif can be read on its own.

Paisley Mandala Lantern Elephant Lotus Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lantern over the floor of the Crescent Ballroom had been bought off a barrow in Birmingham, and nobody had ever persuaded its pierced brass to stop throwing little stars across the boards. By half past nine on a Saturday they skate over your shoes while the band from Wolverhampton attempts a quickstep it has only half learned. Your sister Winifred is already out there, turning with a lad in a borrowed suit, and she signals you onward with a tilt of her chin.

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You stay by the cloakroom with a tray of shandies, because Mr Pell has told you the lantern is going to the rag and bone man on Monday, and you have decided the stars should at least be looked at once more. Then Tomas Hale comes in out of the rain, shaking a sign-writer's cap, and asks if you know the foxtrot. You say you have a train to Leeds on Tuesday and a suitcase that will not shut. He says that is no answer to a question.

The band slides into a waltz. Tomas does not hold you the way the other lads do, as if you might break; he counts under his breath and steers you past the elephant he once painted in gold on the back wall, its trunk curled up for luck. The stars wheel over both of you. When the music stops he takes a stub of carpenter's pencil from behind his ear and draws a small paisley on the frosted window, its curl fat with condensation. 'Leeds has plenty of windows,' he says. 'Somebody there will want their name painted on one.'

You leave with a loose brass star from the floor pressed into your glove, and when the train pulls out you hold it flat against the glass until the lamps of the station are gone.