Colour tattoo of a pocket watch with Roman numerals, red roses and a blue ribbon on the thigh, in a neo-traditional style.

Pocket watch and red rose on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A pocket watch with Roman numerals sits above a large red rose, with a second rose, yellow leaves and a blue ribbon wrapping around the design. The linework is bold and the petals and watch case use soft shading for depth. Red, blue and yellow ink dominate against the pale skin, and the design fills the upper thigh with the subject running diagonally across the leg.

Neo-trad Thigh Pocket watch Clock Rose Ribbon Leaves Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The watch came across my bench on a Tuesday, wrapped in a blue ribbon that had faded to the colour of weak tea. Mrs Harrow set it down as if it might still be warm. The Roman numerals had worn to ghosts, the glass was cracked across the VI, and the hands stood at twenty past eleven and would not be argued with.

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I told her the mainspring had gone soft and the balance staff was bent, which was true, and that a fortnight and a fair sum would have it ticking again. She shook her head. "It only needs starting," she said. "Walter wound it every night at ten. When he went, it simply kept on until morning. Nobody thinks of a clock as something that could be lonely."

I opened the case with a thin screwdriver and found what I half expected: a rose pressed flat between the cover and the movement, its petals gone the brown of old brick. Tucked beside it was a slip of paper in pencil. Bread. The sweep's bill. Tie up the rose on the south wall. Every line was crossed out except the last, which read: Mab, wind me.

I wound it myself, the ribbon still looped round my wrist, and the balance caught on the third turn. Mrs Harrow stood very still by the door, listening the way people listen to a voice in another room. When I gave her the watch back she held it to her ear and nodded once, and she did not ask me for the bill.