Black and grey realism tattoo sleeve on an upper arm showing a Roman numeral pocket watch, a scrolled banner with script lettering, leaves and stars.

Pocket watch and script sleeve on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey sleeve covers the upper arm, centred on a pocket watch with Roman numerals and hands set near the hour. Script lettering runs across scrolled banners beneath it, with leaves, stars and shaded clouds filling the spaces around. The shading is smooth and tonal, with strong contrast on the watch face and banners and softer grey gradients on the surrounding forms.

Realism Lettering Upper arm Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Banner Script Leaves Star Cloud Scroll

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the coal dust on that bench. My gran's uncle worked the Harrow seam when Shotley Bank had only one clock, and it hung above the colliery gate with its Roman numerals gone soft from the smoke. Nobody owned a watch worth the name. The hooter told you when to rise and the shift bell told you when to go, and a man who came up the lane late had lost his place in the cage.

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Then there was Ada Pryce, who kept the lamp room and carried her late husband's silver pocket watch on a chain he'd won at a Whitsun raffle. She wound it every night at the kitchen table under the Lodge banner. She said the watch was a liar most days, always running a little fast, but she knew its face the way you know a dog's face. One March the lamp count came up short, and when she checked the watch against the gate clock, the difference was exactly the length of one man's tea break. The tea break belonged to Owen Gallt.

She found him on the stairs of the lamp room with a primer open on his knee, copying out words from a scrap of paper. He'd been cutting his own tea break short so he could learn his letters before the day shift, and he was ashamed of being caught. Ada said nothing about the watch. She took the chain from her neck, hung it on the nail beside his lamp, and let him keep the hour.

When the pit closed years later and the village scattered, Owen still kept that spare hour somewhere in him. He'd tell his grandchildren it was the only thing a collier ever got for free, and that the trick was to carry it like a lamp, carefully, and never to waste the oil.