Pencil flash drawing of a trident above a triangle and circle with a bird-like figure and arrow, with an Always banner beneath; no body placement shown.

Trident, triangle and Always banner design

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil line drawing on lined notebook paper shows a trident at the top, with a triangle enclosing a circle and an animal-like figure, plus an arrow crossing the lower part. A ribbon banner across the bottom reads ALWAYS in hand-drawn lettering. The linework is clean and outlined, with light shading on the banner and no colour.

Trident Triangle Circle Banner Always Lettering Arrow Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody danced on the pier after the storm of '47, so when the floorboards started humming on a Tuesday I assumed it was the sea. I was sweeping sawdust under the bandstand at the Kestrel when the rain came in sideways like a fistful of thrown forks and the old brass compass above the bar began to spin. Mr Okonedo, who ran the place with a ledger and a cough, said the needle had pointed at the same spot for thirty years, which was the bottom of the harbour where the lifeboat went down.

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A gull came through the open doors that night with a length of silver wire looped round one foot. It landed on the bar, looked at me with one eye, then at the compass, and dropped the wire into a spirit glass. Inside the glass the wire bent itself into a triangle, then a ring within the triangle, then a small arrow that pointed west. I had been taught never to trust anything that arrived with a bird, but I followed the arrow out past the last lamp.

The arrow ended at a rowing boat tied to a mooring ring nobody had used since the war. Under the thwart, folded so neatly it looked ironed, lay a ribbon banner with one word stitched across it in careful capitals: ALWAYS. Someone had made it for a girl who had waited on the sand every evening after the boat went out. The boat never came back, but the ribbon had been kept dry in a biscuit tin.

I carried the ribbon back to the ballroom and hung it on the compass hook. Next morning the needle swung round and stopped, pointing at the door, and Mr Okonedo put the kettle on without a word. We still open the Kestrel on Tuesdays. The gull comes in for the first waltz, and the needle points at whoever is waiting.