Black and grey pencil sketch of a raised hand with a ribbon banner wrapped around the wrist reading Do not open before Christmas, with music notes, shown as a tattoo design on the forearm.

Raised hand with ribbon banner on wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of an open hand raised upwards, with the wrist wrapped by three ribbon banners containing the words Do not open before Christmas. Handwritten lettering beside the hand reads The ribbon on my wrist says, surrounded by five music notes. The linework is fine and even, with light shading on the palm and fingers, and the drawing is entirely in grey pencil on a plain white background.

Forearm Hand Hand Ribbon Banner Text Music note

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday, 12th December. Mam says I am not to write in this book until the concert is over, so I am writing it now under the bedclothes with Dad's spare torch. My wrist still prickles where Hannah wound the ribbon round it three times and tied it off with her teeth. It says Do not open before Christmas in her best silver ink, which she claims is only a joke about the parcel still under the stairs.

Keep reading

Mr Pryce has given me the top line for the carol service. Nobody in Ashgrove sings the top line unless they have a voice like a kettle and nerves like steel cable, he says, and I have neither, but I have the Sunday choir and a cold chapel and a solo in In the Bleak Midwinter that starts on a note I can only reach if I stop thinking about the coal. Every pew will be full, the men still grey from the face, the widows in their black gloves.

Dad came up from the shift at four with his knuckles still black and sat on the step while I practised. He said nothing. When I finished the first verse he took a crumpled programme from his coat, flattened it on his knee and drew five little music notes beside the hymn number, one for each of us still at home. Then he tapped my wrist and said, the ribbon says wait, so wait, and then go on.

I sang it this morning, and the high note came, and Hannah cried into her sleeve. I did not untie the ribbon in the vestry. Hannah says it is not finished until Christmas morning, and I find I agree with her.