Traditional style colour tattoo of a hand making an OK sign with a skull and spider web, two red roses with green leaves, and the words Shit's a OK, on skin.

Traditional hand, rose and lettering tattoo

Traditional · Other · Colour · Photo

A hand forming a circle with thumb and finger, with a small skull and spider web shown on the back of the hand, sits above a red rose with green leaves. The words SHIT'S A OK run in black capitals beneath the rose. The bold black outlines and flat red, green and skin-toned fills are typical of traditional tattooing, and the collage shows the main piece alongside two close-up views.

Traditional Other Hand Rose Leaves Skull Spider web Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every night after the last tram had gone down to the depot, Mags Corrigan climbed the iron steps of the Sallow Street lock and stood with her back to the gasworks. Across the black water, Teddy Wren would lift his lantern from the far towpath. He had lost two fingers to a winch years before, so his light was the only thing that moved steady on that side of the river. Mags would answer by closing her thumb and finger into a ring and holding it up, the way her mother had taught her to say all's well down the river.

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One November the fog came off the estuary and sat on the rooftops for nine days. On the tenth night the lantern did not rise. Mags waited until the church clock struck two, then went down the rope ladder onto the mud because she thought she heard someone calling from the reeds. She found Teddy's cap first, floating against a rusted barge, and then a line of old fishing wire strung across the channel like lace. He was caught in it up to his shoulders, and a skull charm on a cord had snagged against his wrist.

She could not cut him free with her bare hands, so she set her lantern on the barge rail, reached into the wire, and worked the knots loose one at a time. The mud pulled at her boots. When the last strand gave, he came up coughing into the fog, and for a while neither of them could speak. Then he lifted his good hand, made the ring with his thumb and first finger, and held it toward her in the dark.

Mags laughed until she had to sit down on the barge. By morning the whole street knew the story, and the tram conductors started calling the lock Okay Corner, though nobody could say why it stuck. Teddy wore the skull charm on his wrist for the rest of his life. Mags never told anyone how close it had been. Every night after that, the ring went up across the water, and it meant the same thing it always had.