Teacup balanced on a figure's head

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large teacup and saucer rest on the head of a stylised figure whose arms reach out to the sides, with two legs sticking up out of the cup. The bold black outlines are filled with stippled dotwork shading on the cup, saucer and the circular background, which also has small cloud shapes. The design is entirely black and grey and is centred on the outer thigh.

Dotwork Blackwork Thigh Teacup Saucer Figure Leg Cloud Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nan Dilys had never once in sixty years let a teapot go cold, so when the wind got up over the allotments that Thursday, it was Ruth who was sent down the bottom garden with the good china balanced on her head. The cup was the big one with the gold rim, her mother's, and the saucer sat on top of it like a lid on a sky. Ruth had practised with a jam jar. A jam jar was not a teacup.

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Nobody told her how long she had to hold it. The clouds had come down low behind the runner beans, fat and curled like old lace, and they kept asking her questions in the voice of the vicar's wife. She answered as politely as she could, arms out for balance, the way Dad had taught her to walk the garden wall when she was small and he was still certain she would grow up to be a tightrope walker. Her hair fell in wet strings down her back. The beans did not say anything, which she thought was rude of them.

Then Sam came over the fence in his wellingtons, climbed onto the saucer's edge and dropped himself into the cup with his legs kicking over the rim. "I can see the whole county," he shouted. Ruth could see nothing but the underside of the saucer and the grey hem of the afternoon, and she felt the weight of him settle down through her neck like a sack of flour. She did not drop it. She had promised Nan.

When the rain finally came, it came sideways, rattling the lid of the sky. Ruth tilted her head, slow as a crane, and the cup spilled a thin brown stream down over the beans. Sam laughed and kicked his heels. Nan, watching from the back step with the kettle in her hand, nodded once, as if the garden had passed its inspection.