Traditional-style colour tattoo of a green and brown parrot perched among red peonies with dark outlines, on the forearm.

Parrot and peonies on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A green-headed parrot with a brown wing and tail sits on a branch of red peonies, with two more peony blooms and dark green leaves below and above it. The bold black outlines and solid fills of teal, brown, red and green are typical of traditional tattooing, with shading kept minimal. The design fills the forearm, set against a blurred yellow and dark background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ada Pollard had sold peonies from the same bucket on Kirkgate market for thirty-one years, and the parrot on her stall had sold more of them than she had. He could not count change, but he could shout "Two for a pound, love, two for a pound" in her exact cadence, down to the catch in the second word, and the Saturday crowd stopped for him the way they stopped for nobody else.

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The trouble started in March, when the council wanted the stall moved to the far end by the bins. Ada refused to sign. The man from the council came with a clipboard and a sour face, and while he read out the regulations the parrot listened, cocked his head, and then gave the man's own words back to him in a voice like a bailiff's: "Notice is hereby served." The stallholders laughed until they wept. The clipboard man did not.

Ada never quite worked out whether the bird had taken her side or simply enjoyed the performance. What she knew was that on the last Saturday before the move, when the market was almost empty and the rain had started, he flew down from his perch, landed on the cold red heads of the peonies, and sat there quietly, as if he were the one in charge of the flowers now. She wrapped the bunch in brown paper and gave it to the clipboard man for free. He took it without a word, and for once the parrot said nothing at all.

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