Traditional flash design of a red-crested songbird perched on an outstretched hand with a teal rose, a heart pendant and red nails.

Songbird perched on a hand

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A bold traditional-style drawing of a songbird with a red head, black and cream plumage and a heart-shaped pendant on a chain, perched on the fingers of an outstretched hand. The hand has red nails, a ring, a small moon motif and a teal rose with green leaves drawn across the palm, with a lace cuff at the wrist. Solid black outlines and filled colour areas give it a clean, graphic finish against a plain white background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

Keep reading

The bird is still with us, though Mr Askew swears she has cost him three shillings a week in seed and given nothing back. You'll remember the red crest and the cream waistcoat, and the way she sits up like a parson at a christening. She came off the boat from Ostend in a tea chest with air holes punched in the lid, and the only thing Askew kept from the crate was a brass chain with a little gold heart at the end. He hangs it on her perch because a dealer in Dover told him birds like shiny things.

Last Tuesday on the pier she wouldn't sing. A crowd gathered, the way they do for anything that might be a trick, and Askew started shouting about his guarantee. Then Mrs Pell from the chip shop, who has never once paid her bill on time, reached through the bars, lifted the chain off the perch and fastened it round her own wrist. She held her arm up to the sun, and the bird hopped onto her fingers as if it had been waiting all along.

She sang for twenty minutes. Nobody threw coins. Mrs Pell just kept her hand steady and smiled, and the bird went on, and I understood for the first time why people pay for these things.

Askew is furious. He says the heart is worth more than the bird. I've told him to look again at who was holding it.

Yours, Tom

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