Black and grey realism tattoo of a pocket watch with Roman numerals and exposed gears on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch with gears on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic pocket watch fills the forearm, with Roman numerals around the rim and visible clock hands crossing the dial. Exposed gears sit at the top of the face, and the shading gives the metal a polished, three-dimensional look. The ink is entirely black and grey, and the blurred background keeps the focus on the tattoo.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Clock Gear Roman numeral Clock hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The regulator in the back room has been losing four seconds a day since Tuesday, and I have blamed the damp, the cat and the dreadful Mr Hobbs, who brings his granddad's Waltham in every spring. None of it is true. The fault is in my own watch, the one Father gave me the morning I left for Leeds, and I have been too proud to open it.

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So I opened it last night under the lamp with the fine tweezers. Behind the balance wheel there was a hair-thin burr on the third wheel, and caught in its teeth was a bramble thorn, grey with age, from the hedge at the bottom of the garden where we used to race snails. I had not thought of that hedge in thirty years. The thorn belonged to no gear. It had simply been waiting to stop something.

The hands had been frozen at twenty past four, which is the minute I walked out of the gate without looking back. I suppose I had told myself the watch stopped by accident. I know better now. I cleared the burr with a graver no thicker than a hair, wound the mainspring until it began to resist, and set the hands to the bell of St Mary's, which was just striking seven.

The balance took up its tick as though it had only paused to draw breath. I have put the thorn in a saucer on the windowsill, where the afternoon light comes through it, and I have written to Father to say I am coming home on Sunday. The watch is ticking on the table beside me as I write, and for once it is keeping the right time.