Traditional-style flash design of two swallows, a red rose, a red heart, a blue flower, a pocket watch and two sonic screwdriver-style objects, with banners reading All of Time and Space and Allons-y.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swallows, rose and heart with banner scroll

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A traditional-style flash drawing of a red heart at the centre, with two swallows, a red rose at the top and a blue five-petalled flower on the left. Two sonic screwdriver-style objects cross the heart, and a brass pocket watch with visible gears sits at the bottom. Two banners carry the lettering All of Time and Space and Allons-y, and green leaves and small stars fill the dark navy background.

Traditional Swallow Rose Heart Pocket watch Banner Flower Leaves Star Gear

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find Owen behind the marquee at half past four, kneeling on wet grass with a torch the length of a fountain pen, trying to coax the wedding speaker back to life. The bride's father has asked three times where the first dance is. Owen holds up one finger, clicks the torch on and off like a man sending Morse, and the speaker coughs out a dog barking in a church hall, which is nearly the wrong song.

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'Swallows,' he says, nodding up at the bunting, where two birds have got themselves tangled in the paper lanterns. 'They nest in the hay barn every year. Gran said they always come back to the same beam, even when the roof leaks.' He taps the speaker with the glowing tip and it hums. You notice the brass pocket watch on his waistcoat chain has stopped at ten past three, the hour the vows were meant to start, because he has refused to wind it since the funeral.

The speaker crackles, then plays the slow brass arrangement of the song Gran used to hum over the washing up. Owen goes very still. 'Allons-y,' he says quietly, the word she always shouted before any adventure, from the bus stop to the hospital car park. 'Come on, then. Your turn to hold the torch.'

You take it. The bride and groom sway in the middle of the lawn, and the swallows drop out of the lanterns to dip past the heads of the guests. Owen winds the watch with one clumsy turn of his thumb, and it starts, ticking loud enough to hear above the band.