Fine line tattoo of three birds on a branch with musical notes and the script words Don't worry, about a thing, placed on the chest.

Three birds on a branch with script quote

Fine line · Chest · Mixed · Photo

Three small songbirds perch on a thin branch, with musical notes drifting between them and the script words "Don't worry, about a thing" arching above. The linework is fine and dark, with soft grey shading on the wings and heads, and the bellies are filled with bright blue. Colour is limited to the blue accents against black and grey, on a plain skin background.

Fine line Lettering Chest Bird Branch Music note Script Quote Songbird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The back door of Pennick's sticks when the weather turns, so I have learned to lift it by the handle while turning the key. At quarter to four on a cold Tuesday in March I had a flour sack across my hip and the torch in my teeth when the first bird started up on the gutter above the proving room. Just one, testing its throat like a fiddler before the rest of the band arrives.

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Mr Pennick had hung a feeder there years ago and never taken it down, so the blue tits believed the bakery owed them a living. By the time the oven was lit there were three of them, one on the drainpipe, one on the bent aerial, one on the rope of the bell nobody had rung since the Jubilee. They sang in a row. Mr Pennick used to say they were the only staff who never asked for a rise. When the van was late or the yeast had sulked, he would stand in the doorway with his tea and say, 'Don't worry about a thing, Ruthie, the birds have it in hand.' He said it so often I stopped hearing it, which I now think is how you know a thing has become a prayer.

In October the van stopped coming altogether, because Mr Pennick had gone into the Royal Infirmary and not come back out. I was left with the keys, the ledger and a batch of rye that would not rise. I opened at four regardless. The birds were on their gutter as if nothing had changed, and I stood in the lamplight with flour to the wrists, humming his line badly and out of tune.

The middle one turned its head at me, as though to ask what the fuss was about, and sang the note I had been missing. I put the first tray in the oven and let the morning come up on its own.