Colour traditional tattoo of a blue striped gift box with a blue bow and a pink burst on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Striped gift box with bow and pink burst

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A striped blue box with gold rims and a blue bow sits at the centre, with a pink burst of rays rising from its open top. White puffs of cloud and soft blue wash surround the design. Bold black outlines, solid fills and soft shading give it a classic colour look.

Traditional Upper arm Bow Cloud Stripe

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cook on the Marigold Rose kept his one good thing in a tin on the galley shelf, a striped tin with gold rims that his mother had sent him from Hull the year before she died. Nobody touched it. When the weather turned in the Bay of Biscay and the pans went flying, he would sit with his back against the cold stove and tell the boys that the lid was full of wind.

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Then young Tomasz Pell, who was sixteen and had never been told no in his life, lifted it off one night while the cook slept off his rum. Out came a bow of blue ribbon, and after it a rush of pink light that filled the galley from deck to beams, warm as a kitchen on Sunday. The boys stood gaping. The cook woke with the glow on his face and said nothing at all, only held out his hand for the tin.

He put the lid back on and gave the boy a biscuit. In the morning the sea had gone flat as a plate, and the lookout swore he saw gulls sitting on the water in neat white puffs, like they were waiting for something to be unwrapped. The cook never told them what had been inside. He only said that some things are better kept than opened, and that a sailor ought to know the difference before he's old enough to care.