Black and grey realism pocket watch with Roman numerals and a rose on a forearm, with script lettering above and characters at the wrist.

Pocket watch and rose on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed pocket watch with Roman numerals and an exposed movement sits on the forearm, with a ribbon curling beneath it and a shaded rose at its base. Smooth shading and fine highlights give the metal, glass and petals a three-dimensional look. Script lettering runs along the upper arm side, and a small set of characters sits near the wrist, all in black and grey ink against the skin.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Rose Ribbon Script Character

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad's watch had stopped at twenty to four, and nobody in Harrow House could tell me which four it had been. The lift on the ninth floor had stuck that same afternoon, so I told myself the two things were connected, because a sensible story is easier to carry down nine flights of stairs than a broken one.

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Mrs Okafor from flat 14 brought me a rose in a jam jar the week after the funeral. She said nobody should have to sort a dead man's paperwork with his watch sitting in the drawer, ticking at nothing. I didn't have the heart to tell her it hadn't ticked since March. I just kept it in my jacket and took it out on the stairwell, turning the winder that never turned anything, listening to the tiny wheels inside that wouldn't catch.

Ray from the council took me down to the basement boiler room, where the old caretaker kept a drawer of dead clocks. He said they all stopped for the same reason, somebody forgot to wind them. Then he tapped the glass with a biro and said the mainspring had snapped, not been forgotten. Too many years in a pocket near a hot boiler, he said, and cheap oil.

I sat on an upturned bucket with the watch open in my palm and the lift cage rattling somewhere above us. Ray found a spring in a tin of bits. It took two hours and a lot of swearing. When the balance wheel finally rocked back and forth, I climbed the nine flights without touching the rail, and I didn't stop once to check the time.