Two legs raised against a pale wall, covered in traditional-style tattoos of a shark, roses and a clock on the thigh and calf, with white high-top trainers.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional leg sleeve with shark and roses

Traditional · Thigh · Colour · Photo

Two bare legs are raised against a plain pale wall, both covered in dense tattoos. The designs include a shark, red roses, a dial with hands, a bird, and a dagger, outlined in bold black linework with solid fills. Colour is strong across reds, greens, yellows and blues, with dark shading in the background areas, and the white trainers add contrast at the top of the frame.

Traditional Thigh Calf Shark Rose Clock Bird Dagger Leg sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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Your mum says I'm not to write you a speech, so this is a letter instead, which is different, and you can read it on the train if you like. The clock is in the box with this. It came off the bulkhead of the Mary Ellen in 1961, the year the Hull boats gave up the far grounds, and it has run slow ever since, which is the only honest thing about it. I wound it every Sunday for forty years. Your nan said it was the only thing in the house that never asked me for anything.

There was a shark that followed the trawler every August, grey as an old boot, and the cook swore it was the same one each year, though he'd also sworn the galley cat could read. Before my first trip I had a dagger inked on my forearm in a back room in Grimsby, mostly to look hard in front of the lads, and the man who did it charged me a shilling more because I flinched. The night I asked your nan to marry me I had a red rose in my jacket from the dock florist. I went down on one knee on the slip, pulled it out, and it slipped straight through my fingers into the harbour. The tide took it. She laughed till she had to sit on the bollard, and then she said I'd better fetch another. I've been fetching them ever since, every anniversary, whatever the weather.

The clock stopped in March. The spring went, and I never fixed it, because the hands still sit at twenty past four, which is near enough the minute she said yes. I know you'll want it running for the day, and a jeweller in Beverley could probably do it in a week. Don't let him. Just set it right by your own watch on the morning, and let it go slow the way it always has.

With all my love, and a rose in my pocket for you too, Grandad Eddie