Realism style black and grey arm sleeve with a pocket watch, gears and a maple leaf, shown from three angles on the arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch, gears and maple leaf sleeve

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A collage of three photographs of a full arm sleeve. The main panels show a shaded pocket watch with Roman numerals, surrounded by cogs, drifting clouds and light rays. A close-up panel shows a shaded maple leaf with a raised, three-dimensional look.

Realism Forearm Upper arm Pocket watch Clock Gear Cog Maple leaf Cloud Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The watch quit at Hatton Lock, a little after four, and I only knew because Dad's hand went to his waistcoat the way it always did when something had gone wrong with the day. He held it up to the grey light between the gates. The hands had stopped at ten to twelve, which he said was the time of every important mistake he had ever made.

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We were working the Nell Dorrigan down from the summit with forty tons of slate for a yard in Stourport. The lock keeper's chimney was smoking, so the air smelled of wet coal and cut grass. Dad sat on the balance beam and tipped the watch to the sun. Light came through the poplars in long bars, and the water below the paddles threw it back in broken pieces. "Your grandfather's," he said. "Came over on a ship with a leaf pressed inside the case. Picked it up in Halifax and never told anyone why."

I wound it for him. The crown was stiff, and the gears inside clicked like the paddle gear that lifts the gate, cog against cog, until the second hand jumped and went round. Dad watched the minute hand move and said nothing for a while. Then a maple leaf came off the nearest tree, turned twice in the air and landed on the lock side, dry as paper.

"Right then," he said, standing and dusting off his trousers. "Let's get her down." We went through on the rising water, and I kept the leaf in my pocket until we reached the basin, where I still have it. The watch keeps good time now. It's the only thing aboard that does.