Realistic colour tattoo of an open pocket watch showing its brass movement and Roman numerals, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic pocket watch on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo depicts an open pocket watch with its crown at the top left, a Roman numeral dial and exposed gears in the centre. The linework is fine and the shading is smooth, giving the metal case a soft, three-dimensional look. Warm browns, oranges and reds dominate the colour, with grey and black used for shadow, and the watch fills most of the frame against a dark background.

Realism Forearm Pocket watch Clock Gear Roman numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift at Halewood House stopped between the ninth and tenth floors on a wet Tuesday, so I sat on the scuffed floor with my tool bag and waited for the emergency phone to ring someone who cared. It was Mr Dacre who rang me instead, from the flat above the bins, because he had heard me swearing through the shaft and wanted to know if I was the man who fixed clocks. I was not. I fixed lifts. But he had a watch that wouldn't keep time, and nobody else in the block would touch it.

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He met me at his door in a cardigan with the sleeves pushed up, and he held the watch out on his palm as if it might bite. The case was worn gold, the Roman numerals crowded round the dial, the little crown at the top rubbed smooth by a thumb. Through the open back the gears showed like the workings of the building itself, all teeth and patience. "It was my brother's," he said. "It runs fast. I've been setting it back every Sunday since 1979 and it hasn't learned a thing."

I borrowed a jeweller's loupe from the company stock cupboard, the first thing I had ever taken without asking. Under the glass I found a grey hair caught between the balance and the plate, and a bent pin where someone had once dropped the thing. I lifted the hair away and eased the pin straight with the tip of a cocktail stick. Mr Dacre watched my hands the way you'd watch a surgeon.

It took two hours. When the second hand finally swept true, he laughed, then stopped laughing and said, "Well. Now it'll be right and I'll be late for everything." I rode the lift down with the watch ticking in his waistcoat pocket, and I noticed the car's own display was four minutes slow. For once I left it that way.