Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Pocket watch and flowers on an arm
Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo
A gold pocket watch with Roman numerals and a key-shaped bow sits at the centre, framed by two pink and blue flowers with yellow centres and a beaded chain. The bold black outlines, flat colour fills and green leaves are typical of traditional tattooing, and the clock face has soft grey shading. The design fills the upper part of the frame, with another tattoo partly visible at the lower edge.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Ruth,
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The pocket watch your father left me has stopped again, and I have not the nerve to take it to Mr Halloran at the back of the ironmongers. He is the only man in Ashby Cross who can mend the old movements, and he charges a shilling for the privilege and a lecture on winding habits. So it sits on the dresser beside the tea caddy, hands fixed at twenty past five, the same hour the telegram came.
I know you think I should sell it. You said so on Sunday, standing in the yard with the washing cracking between us. But the chain has beads on it, little pearls the colour of milk, and the key on the bow is worn smooth where your father's thumb went every morning before the bus. The roses painted round its face are not roses at all, Ruth. They are wild briar, the sort that grew up the railway embankment where he used to cut through to the depot.
Mr Halloran says it is only a spring. Perhaps it is. Yesterday I wound it, carefully, the way he showed me, and it ticked for nearly a minute before the hands slid back. I kept listening after it stopped, which is foolish, I know.
Tell the boys the kettle is on the left hob now, not the right. And write back, even if it is only the price of coal.
Mum
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