Black and grey realism tattoo of a pocket watch and two roses with scrollwork on the forearm, with cursive script visible above.

Pocket watch and roses on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo shows a pocket watch with Roman numerals and detailed hands, set between two shaded roses and ornate scrollwork. The shading is smooth and layered, giving the watch case and rose petals depth and realistic highlights. The composition runs vertically along the forearm, with the watch at the centre and a partial script tattoo visible at the top left against a plain tiled floor.

Realism Botanical Forearm Pocket watch Clock Rose Scrollwork Leaves Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now, you lot who sat at the back by the radiator, listen, because I'm only telling this once before the sandwiches go soggy. Harold Pennick had a watch his father left him, a silver pocket watch with Roman numerals worn soft as bread crust, and he wound it every night at ten, never ten past, never nine fifty. Everybody knew that. It was the one thing about Harold that never wobbled.

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The summer we left school, Harold met a girl called Ivy Marsh who grew roses behind the chapel wall, great blowsy cabbage ones, and she told him the trouble with roses is they insist on being looked at exactly when they're going over. He laughed. He bought a dozen from her for a penny, and she pinned one to his lapel, and he forgot to wind the watch that night. It stopped at twenty past ten, hands crossed like two tired schoolmasters.

He never had it fixed. Forty years he carried it stopped, and whenever someone asked him the time he'd open the case, look at the little hands standing still, and say, 'Ask the roses.' Nobody understood until Ivy came back to this very hall last spring, on her own, with a tin of pressed petals under her arm. She sat down beside him, took the watch from his waistcoat, and wound it. It ran. Neither of them said a word about it. The sandwiches went soggy, and nobody minded.