Neo-traditional tattoo of a sloth in red glasses and a plaid scarf, holding a takeaway coffee cup, on the upper arm.

Sloth with glasses and coffee on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A sloth with red-framed glasses and a plaid scarf looks out from an oval frame, holding a takeaway coffee cup with steam rising beside it. Bold outlines, smooth shading and a palette of blues, yellows, reds and greys give it a bright, cartoonish finish. The design sits on the outer upper arm, with a blue sky and cloud shapes behind the figure and yellow swirling framing elements around the edge.

Neo-trad Upper arm Sloth Glasses Scarf Coffee cup Steam Cloud Feather Oval frame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Idris Pell had kept the flask stall at Hobbs Lock for eleven years, and in all that time nobody had ever seen him hurry. He moved the way wet paper dries, slowly and without complaint, and he wore his red spectacles pushed low on a face the colour of the canal bank. The boat crews forgave him his pace because the coffee was good, and the steam from his cup drifted down to the water in a grey thread that curled over the moored narrowboats like a signal nobody could read.

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On the first Saturday of August the regatta committee sent a boy with a clipboard to ask whether the stall could open early for the race start. Pell considered this for most of a morning. He sent back a note on the back of a receipt: "Will open when the kettle has thought about it. Yours, I.P." The boy waited on the bridge with the clipboard pressed to his chest and said the committee would be cross. Pell had heard that before.

At half past ten the first crews came through the lock too quickly, shoulders hunched, shouting for tea. Pell did not look up. He wound his plaid scarf twice round his neck, lifted the lid of a cup that had been ready since dawn, and handed it across the rail. The rower who took it drank in one gulp, scalded his tongue, and spent the rest of the morning rowing very carefully because he could not feel his mouth.

By afternoon the race was won by the slowest boat on the water, a steel barge someone had sponged cloud shapes onto as a joke. Pell watched it nudge over the line at the speed of a sleeping cat. Nobody cheered. He lifted his cup a fraction of an inch, took a long sip, and said to the empty bench beside him, "Told you," which the bench, to its credit, did not dispute.