Colour tattoo of a dark space helmet with stars, a cratered moon and a red rocket with an orange trail, in a bold neo-traditional style on the forearm.

Space helmet and rocket on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A bold illustration of a dark, rounded helmet-like shape filled with white stars, enclosing a pale cratered moon and a red rocket with an orange flame trail. A blue, flame-like crest rises from the top and a blue collar with a pale shirt sits at the base. Heavy black outlines, flat fills and a mix of blue, red, orange and pink give it a graphic, controlled look, and it is shown on the inside of a forearm.

Neo-trad Forearm Space Helmet Moon Rocket Star Astronaut

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lights on Corporation Street had gone amber by midnight and I was still standing at the bus shelter with Dad's old lunch tin under my arm. You'll say I should have rung. I didn't want to hear you tell me again that he'd have wanted the helmet kept in the glass cabinet.

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I found it at the back of the wardrobe, the one he wore for the Carnival parade in 1979 when he was the only man in Digbeth dressed as a spaceman. The crest is gold card gone soft at the edges, the moon is a cereal packet painted with cheap poster paint, and the red rocket still hangs on its string. You and I fought over that rocket for a whole summer. Remember?

Tonight the city was quiet enough to hear the canal locks. I walked up to the top of the multistorey on Moor Street, where the wind comes off the rooftops, and held the helmet against the sky so the streetlamps shone through its black card. The white dots punched through the paper like stars. I felt daft and I felt fine.

I let go of the rocket string and it didn't fly, of course. It dropped into a skip below. But I'm writing to say I kept the moon. It's pinned above my kettle now, and when the night bus goes past the window it catches the light. Come up at Christmas and bring the flask. Love, Maggie.