Black and grey realism tattoo of a shaded treble clef wrapped in a twisting ribbon of music staves with notes, on the upper arm.

Treble clef and music staff ribbon on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large treble clef with ornate scrolled edges curls across a ribbon of music staff paper that twists in three dimensions, with several quaver and crotchet notes printed on the lines. The linework is bold and the shading is smooth, giving the ribbon a rounded, lifted appearance and casting soft shadows across the skin. The tattoo is in black and grey only and fills most of the frame against a plain skin tone.

Realism Upper arm Treble clef Music staff Musical note Ribbon Music

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fiddler stepped off the last train from Carlisle with his case under one arm and no ticket in his hand, and Aldous Penhale, the stationmaster, told him the clock over platform two had stopped for the winter and would not be wound until spring. The fiddler said he had no quarrel with clocks. He sat on the bench beneath it, opened the case, and took out a bow that looked to Aldous like a length of old church music rolled tight.

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When he drew it across the strings, a ribbon of paper slid out from under the bow and unspread itself along the platform. It was ruled in five lines, and black notes sat on the lines like sparrows on a wire. The ribbon curled round the lamp post, rose over the gutter, and turned in on itself, and at its heart a great curling clef opened like a fern. Porters stopped with their trolleys. A woman with a pram wept without knowing why.

Nell Harrow, who had sold tickets at that hatch for thirty years, heard the tune and dropped her pen. It was the air her mother had hummed on the walk to the station the morning she left for good, and Nell had not heard it since. The fiddler lifted his chin toward the hatch. "Sing the bottom line," he said, "and the clock goes on."

She sang it, badly at first, then true. Each note she gave went up the paper and was caught by the clef, which tightened and lifted the whole ribbon clear of the iron. By the time the tune ended, the platform was bare and grey again, the trains were running late, and the bench under the clock held nothing but a folded sheet of staff paper with one crotchet printed in the margin. Nell kept it in her apron pocket until the station closed, and the clock, when Aldous finally wound it in March, struck the hour a half-beat behind the rest of the town.