Neo-traditional tattoo of a penguin inside a red cartouche with gold scrollwork and grey shaded clouds above, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Penguin in a red frame on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A penguin stands in profile within an oval red panel framed by yellow and gold scrollwork, with a grey dotted cloud motif across the top. The penguin has black shading on its back and a pale belly, with a yellow beak and bold outlines throughout. The design is centred on the upper thigh and filled in with a limited palette of red, yellow, grey and black.

Neo-trad Thigh Penguin Cloud Scrollwork Frame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, that's the only honest bit of this platform," said Mrs Aggie Tallow, who had kept the left luggage hatch at Carrowmore for forty years. She tucked the tartan rug over the boy's knees. "I'll tell you about the penguin in the red frame, since you've asked me twice and you're not going anywhere until the 9.14 comes in."

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It came to the station in the winter of 1947, in a crate stamped FRAGILE, THIS WAY UP, sent up from Leith on a coal boat and addressed to a bishop nobody in Carrowmore had ever met. When Donal Pike, the porter, prised the lid off, there was no bird inside. There was a tin panel, painted to look like a cartouche: a penguin standing in profile inside an oval of red enamel, gold scrollwork curling round it like the cuffs on a good coat, and over its head a grey cloud of dots to keep the rain off. Donal swore it was the most dignified thing he had ever lifted. Penguins, he said, never hurry. They stand where they are and let the weather come to them.

The bishop never sent for it. Donal kept it on the shelf behind the hatch for three years, and whenever the trains ran late he would tap the little cloud with one finger and say it was holding the rain back for us. Then, one March morning, a girl from the sorting office called Peg came asking after a trunk that had gone missing from Aberdeen. Behind the panel, pressed flat against the tin, she found a folded timetable with her brother's handwriting on the back, and a note saying he would be on the platform the day the penguin was collected. He had never collected it. He had waited for her instead.

So when you're stood there fretting about the train, boy, do as Donal would have done. Stand still, look dignified, and let the cloud see to the weather. Here's the 9.14 now, right on time, and you'll not be carrying anything heavier than your own good sense.