Close view of a fine line script tattoo reading tempus fugit in dark ink across the upper back, between the shoulder blades.

Tempus fugit script on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the upper back of a person with reddish hair pinned up, viewed from behind. The tattoo reads "tempus fugit" in a thin, flowing handwritten script in dark blue-black ink, placed near the centre of the upper back. The background is softly blurred greenery with a figure in a blue jacket out of focus at the left, and the sheer, sequin-trimmed garment frames the back.

Fine line Lettering Back Script text Latin phrase Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, the bench won't bite. You want the story of the sundial at Hollin Court, and you'll not get it while you keep looking at your watch. Thomas Ashdown cut that dial in 1769 from a block of grey Portland stone that came up the river on a barge nobody remembers the name of. He carved the motto himself, Tempus fugit, in letters so fine you need the low sun to read them, and his wife Martha said it was a morbid thing to put in a garden where children played.

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Martha had a habit of counting the hours out loud when the house went quiet. Her youngest, Eliza, learned to count with her, and by nine she could tell the hour from the shadow with her eyes shut. Eliza grew up, married a surveyor from Kendal, and left for the north with a trunk of seeds and no intention of coming back. Thirty years on she wrote one letter to the gardener, asking only whether the dial still kept good time.

Old Pell walked out at noon with the letter in his apron pocket and found the shadow lying clean across the Latin. He laughed, because he understood at last what she was asking. He wrote back a single line on the back of a seed packet: it runs a little slow, come and set it. She came. Some say she set it herself, standing in the bean rows with her sleeves rolled up. Others say she only sat here on this bench and let the sun do the work.

Mind the step on your way out. The stone there is worn hollow from all the people who came to check the time and stayed for the story.