Black and grey realism tattoo of shaded roses, leaves and a pocket watch with Roman numerals on a thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Roses and pocket watch on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

Shaded roses and leaves surround a pocket watch with Roman numerals, with a pointed feather or leaf shape crossing the lower left of the design. The work uses soft grey shading and fine detail on the petals, leaves and watch case. Only black ink and grey tones are visible, and the composition wraps around the front and side of the thigh.

Realism Botanical Thigh Rose Leaf Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The watch had stopped at twenty to four, the same hour the Leeds train used to go through without slowing, and nobody in our house would touch it. Mum kept it on the sideboard between the cruet and the jug of roses I cut each Friday from the wall by the coal bunker, and every time I dusted round it I felt it waiting for me.

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Dad had been the signalman at Hollin Cross for twenty-two years. He left the watch with me the night they took him to hospital in Harrogate and said, June, don't let the hands go soft, a railwayman's time is the only honest thing he owns. He didn't come home after that. Ronnie said he'd gone off with a woman from the bakery, which is what Ronnie said about everybody.

On the Saturday I carried the watch down to Mr Pell on Church Street, who had mended clocks in the town since before the old king died. He opened the back with a little hook and turned the case to the window. Under the glass someone had pressed a single dried petal and a grey feather from a pigeon, and folded beneath them was a scrap of paper in Dad's square capitals. It said: WIND ME ON THE FIRST AND I'LL BE HOME FOR THE TEN O'CLOCK. Mr Pell wouldn't take a penny for the repair. He said the mainspring was sound and it had only needed someone to decide what time it was.

I wound it that evening, set it by the wireless pips, and walked down to the platform at ten to ten with a rose in my other hand. The last train came in with its lamps lit and the doors banged open one by one. I stood with the watch open on my palm and waited, the way you do, for the hour to finish arriving.