Back of a woman's neck with a small black fine-lined tattoo of Roman numerals, XXXI above XIIIX, worn with a gold leaf chain.

Roman numerals on the back of the neck

Lettering · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A woman with dark hair, photographed from behind, shows a small black tattoo of two lines of Roman numerals on the nape of her neck. The numerals are set in a plain, upright serif lettering with clean, even strokes. A thin gold chain with leaf-shaped links rests across her upper back, and she wears a black top with a bra strap visible, against a blurred street background.

Lettering Neck Roman numeral Numeral Necklace Hair Back

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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

Dear Nell, the Ashby church clock has stopped again, and Mr Coles has asked me to fetch the dial down from the tower before the frost gets into the works. I took the numerals off by hand this morning, one at a time, with the little brass punch your mother kept in her sewing tin. Every one of them had gone green at the edges. The XII was the worst, its serifs worn to nubs where the rain had sat in the grooves for forty years.

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Coles wants them cast new in Birmingham, but I told him I could cut them here if he gave me a fortnight. He laughed and said I'd never managed to get a dinner on the table on time, let alone a clock. So I've been at the bench every night since, copying the old letters from a photograph and working out how the strokes sat so evenly. There's no curl to them at all. Just straight upright bars and a plain serif, the way a man writes when he means every word.

Last night I found figures scratched on the inside of the case door, two lines in pencil. I couldn't make them out under the lamp until I held the glass to them. One was the day your grandfather was born and the other was the day the mill closed, and I'd never known anyone else had thought to put those two together. I sat with it for an hour, then wrote them out properly, one stroke after another, and I think I'll leave them where they are.

The dial goes back up on Thursday. If you come home for the fair you can climb the tower with me and check the hands yourself. Tell me if I've got the sevens right. Your father, who still can't tell the time without looking at the church.