Black and grey realism tattoo on an upper arm showing a pocket watch, a cassette tape, white blossoms and a clock face with Roman numerals.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch, cassette and blossoms on an arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic sleeve design of a pocket watch with Roman numerals and visible gears, set above a cassette tape with a label and a white feather or flower. Blossoms surround the motifs, and a clock face with Roman numerals sits at the lower edge. The shading is soft and detailed in black and grey against a dark background.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Flower Blossom Feather Gear

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Your mother always said I wound the stopwatch like I was trying to keep a train on time, and she was right. I have had the pocket watch on my chain since the spring we moved to Halsey Road, and it still loses four minutes a week no matter how I fiddle with the balance. I have stopped trying to fix it. You can have it when I'm gone, though I want you to know the gears inside are older than the case, and the case is dented where I dropped it on the platform at Crewe.

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The tape is the other thing I wanted to tell you about. Bert Kinnear's shop in Mill Lane had a box of them under the counter, blank ones, and he let me have three for a shilling because the labels had gone soft at the corners. I recorded your gran singing on the back porch the week before she went into hospital. Side one is her voice, side two is the wireless picking up Radio Luxembourg through the rain. I wrote the name across the front in my worst capitals, and the ink has bled into the grain of the paper now, so the letters look like they're blushing.

I found the feather in the garden last Tuesday, white and stiff, caught in the honeysuckle by the gate. The blossom had come out all at once that week, the way it does, and I stood there with the feather in one hand and my watch in the other and thought the whole lot ought to be kept together in a drawer. So I have put them in the biscuit tin with the tape and the spare keys. Come home at Easter and I'll show you where everything is. Bring the clock with the broken hour hand, the one you said you'd repair. We'll see which of us gets it running first.

All my love, Dad