Small black and grey swallow tattoo in a traditional style, positioned on the upper shoulder of a person wearing a black sleeveless top.

Small swallow on a shoulder

Traditional · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A small swallow in flight is tattooed on the upper body, with its wings spread and tail forked. The design uses dark outlines and black shading with grey tones in the wings and body. The photograph is a close, slightly angled shot against a white bedroom background, and the tattoo is the clear focus.

Traditional Shoulder Swallow Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, you lot, settle down, I haven't got all night and the caretaker's wife has the key to the fire door. Most of you remember the swallows. Every April they came back to the boiler house flashing, the same pair, and every April Mr Pryce from the governors wanted their mud nest knocked off before the inspector arrived. Nobody ever managed it before the eggs were laid.

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Nineteen ninety-six, that was. A girl called Ruth Lockyer sat in the back row of my form room with her chin on her fist, and she was the only one who noticed the male had a tail split like a pair of scissors. She drew him in biro down the inside cover of her planner, wings swept back as if he was late for something. When the nest came down that summer in the holidays, she told me the birds would go wherever the first decent window was left open, and she'd be keeping one open. I said that was nonsense. I was young and I knew everything.

In September the top pane of our form room was propped on a broom handle, and there they were, two of them, picking at the sill as though they'd paid the rent. Ruth never once said she'd done it. She just looked out at them through the glass with that pencil behind her ear. I've been trying to remember what she said when I asked her about it, and all I can hold on to is that she laughed and said, sir, they always find the way in.

Listen, there's the toast coming and I'll be sat down in a minute. Look at the side doors. Hang on. Yes, there. Nobody move. That's one of them, come in through the gap by the bunting, going straight past the trophy cabinet. Go on then, Ruth, lift your glass.