Black and white photo of a forearm with two thin solid black bands tattooed around it, below a pushed-up grey sweatshirt sleeve.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two black bands on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm is shown in a black and white photograph, with a grey sweatshirt sleeve pushed up above the elbow and dark trousers at the bottom edge. Two thin, solid black parallel lines encircle the forearm, evenly spaced and of equal width. The plain light background and soft even lighting keep the focus on the minimal linework.

Blackwork Forearm Band Line Armband

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the snow closed the Hollin line on Tuesday and it has not opened since, so I am writing this at the back table of the Crossed Keys with my boots drying on the fender. The landlady, Mrs Pardoe, says the drifts at the cutting are higher than the signal arm. I have counted the telegraph poles from the window as far as the bend, and nine are still standing, the rest gone under.

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The two rails are still there. I checked this morning before the light went. They run out of the yard side by side, the same width apart the whole way, and under the snow you cannot see the iron, only two dark furrows where the wind has scoured them clean. Father used to say a line is only honest if the rails keep their distance. If one drifts, the train goes wherever the ground lets it, and that is no way to run anything.

Mrs Pardoe's boy came in with news that a goods wagon is stuck at Hollin Halt with a driver, a stoker and a crate of Dutch clocks. They have a fire going in the van and they are singing. I told him to take them a lamp and a loaf, and to walk the rails the whole way, one foot on each, so he would know if he had strayed.

He came back at six with frost on his eyebrows and a message scratched on the back of a ticket: all well, rails straight. I have pinned it above the fire. Come up in spring and bring your good coat, because the line will open and I want to show you where it runs.