Colourful tattoo of a black police box beneath a swirling pink and teal vortex across the shoulder and upper arm, shown from two angles.

Police box and vortex on a shoulder

Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A black police box, drawn with bold outlines and dark splatter marks, sits in the lower half of the design on the upper arm. Above it, a swirling vortex in pink, teal, orange and green fills the shoulder, with an orange burst beside the box. Two photographs show the tattoo from different angles against a dark background, with the wearer's striped top visible.

Shoulder Upper arm Police box Splatter Sky

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hush now and shift up, because the kettle won't wait on the end of a story. My grandad's grandad was working the Grand Union the summer the sky went round like cream stirred in a bowl. Pink first, then teal, then a green so bright it made the lock-keepers squint. Every boat from Braunston to Brentford stopped dead in the water to stare at it.

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On the third evening, at Stoke Bruerne, the swirl drew down over the towpath and out stepped a box. Black as a boot, taller than a man, with POLICE in white letters along its roof and a lamp that blinked like it was counting. Nobody had ever seen a police box standing in a field of nettles, and nobody could say how it got there. Old Mags from the Marigold walked straight up to its door and rapped on it with her pipe.

The door opened a crack and a voice inside said, 'Is this the right century? Only I've been told I'm early.' Mags said it was 1936 and she'd be obliged if it went somewhere else for its tea. The box gave a sigh like a bellows, the sky spat orange sparks down the cut, and the thing was gone before the kettle boiled. Where it had stood, the grass was flecked with black drops, as if someone had shaken an ink pot over it.

The drops never washed off the towpath. Mags's great-granddaughter still shows them to visitors, and if you look hard by the lock gate you'll find them yet, scattered like a question nobody has answered. And if your own kettle ever hums for no reason, you'll know the box is still out there, trying the door.