Colour neo-trad tattoo of a sloth in a top hat, monocle, bow tie and smoking a pipe, framed by roses and swirling smoke on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sloth in top hat and monocle on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A sloth wearing a purple top hat with a pink band, a round monocle and a pink paisley bow tie sits in the centre of the design, smoking a pipe. Roses, a feather and swirling blue and purple smoke frame the figure within an oval, with bold outlines and smooth shading. Bright blue, pink, orange, green and purple ink dominate on pale skin, and the design fills most of the upper arm.

Neo-trad Traditional Upper arm Sloth Top hat Monocle Bow tie Pipe Smoke Rose Feather Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sloth had owned the same top hat since the spring the Harrowgate Co-op closed, and he wore it to the bank on the first Monday of every month whether or not the bank had asked him to. Mrs Pilling at the counter had stopped asking him to take it off. She only watched the monocle swing on its beaded chain as he counted out his pension in coins, each one set down with the care of a man laying bricks.

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On the fourth Monday that October he came in with no coins at all. He laid a pink paisley bow tie on the marble and asked whether the bank would take a feather in exchange for the rent on the allotment. Mrs Pilling looked at the feather, which was green at the quill and very long, and then at the blue smoke curling from his pipe up past the ceiling lamp. She said the bank had never been offered smoke before, and would have to consult the manager, who was at lunch.

The manager was a magpie called Dorrance who ate his sandwiches in the vault. He came out wiping his beak and said that the rose on the sloth's shoulder was the same rose that had been painted on the Co-op's shutters for thirty years, and that he had always wondered where it went. The sloth told him it had gone up the arm, and was still there, and that the orange poppy beside it had been a bit of a showoff.

They settled it with a handshake and a receipt written on the back of a seed packet. Mrs Pilling kept the receipt in her purse for the rest of her life, and when people asked what the strangest transaction at Harrowgate Bank had been, she would show them the feather, still green, and say nothing about the smoke.