Black ink pocket watch with Roman numerals, a flower and a banner reading TIME IS ON MY SIDE, tattooed on a forearm.

Pocket watch and banner on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A pocket watch with Roman numerals and a question mark on its dial sits beside a flower and a loose chain. A ribbon banner across the lower forearm carries the words TIME IS ON MY SIDE. The design uses bold outlines and dotted detailing in solid black ink with no colour.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every fourth morning the barge Patience came down the Thorne Cut with coal for the mill, and every fourth morning Hal Brennan sat on her cabin roof whittling, his pocket watch open on his knee, saying the water would tell him when to move.

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At Gaunt's Lock the keeper, Mab Tully, had heard enough of this. She bet him a sack of flour that he could not bring the Patience through and tie up below the mill before the bell struck noon. Hal laughed, shook her hand, and went back to his carving.

The gates groaned and the sluice ran. Hal took the tiller only when the sun sat on the mill chimney, and he let the boat drift the last half mile as though the canal had all afternoon. Mab stood on the bank with her arms folded, counting under her breath. At the stroke of twelve the mill bell rang, and the Patience was still a furlong short of the wharf.

Mab held out her hand for the flour. Hal snapped the watch shut and turned it so she could see the dial. The hands had stopped years back, pointing at a question mark that the maker's daughter had scratched where the twelve should have been. 'Bell's never wrong,' he said. 'That watch has been stuck since the day I bought it, and I've been living off that question mark ever since.' She took the flour anyway, and he let her, and they split the sack on the wharf.

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