Fine line tattoo of alternating grey and red parallel lines wrapping around the inner forearm and wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Parallel lines wrapped around a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm with a series of thin parallel lines wrapping fully around the arm like bands. The lines alternate between grey and red and are drawn with even spacing and steady, fine linework. The wrist sits against a blue polka dot dress and a brown belt, with a metal buckle and necklace visible above.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, the eight-fifteen is never before nine, so you've time for this. My grandfather worked the points at Clayhithe Junction when the signal colours were still painted on every fence post, grey for going and red for stopping, so a man in fog could count his way home. He used to say a railway is only a set of promises laid side by side, and the trick is never to let one rail get ahead of the other.

Keep reading

There was a lad called Tobias Wren who came up from the coal yards with a pocketful of ink and a wager that he could mark the whole east approach in a single summer. He went round with a brush and a rule, banding every signal post and water tower, grey, then red, then grey again, until the men said he'd gone soft in the head. Nobody told him that a line painted round a thing never really stops, and by August he had wrapped the goods shed twice and the lamp post outside the ticket hall once for luck.

The fog came in on the first of September, thick as wool, and the night mail was somewhere out past the sidings. Tobias walked the platform end to end, pressing his palm to each striped post and counting the bands under his fingers the way you'd count the rungs of a ladder. He found the way by feel and swung his lamp to bring the driver through. Nobody ever called it heroism, mostly because he was too busy counting.

So when you glance up at that clock and wonder why it has stripes round its face, that's the answer. Grey for the going, red for the stopping, and a lad counting bands in the fog to find his way home. Mind the gap on your way out, love.

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