Colour traditional tattoo of a typewriter with a banner reading HOW SOON IS NOW and red flowers, on a forearm.

Typewriter and banner reading How Soon Is Now

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A grey and black typewriter sits across the centre of the design, with orange-tipped keys and a pale pink banner curling across its front that reads HOW SOON IS NOW. Red and pink flowers with teal leaves frame the typewriter on either side. The shading is smooth and the outlines are bold, and the colour ink is applied across the whole piece against a light textured towel.

Traditional Forearm Banner Lettering Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had come in sideways over the fish stalls by eleven, and Ada Pryce pulled the tarpaulin off her typewriter the way other women unpinned their hair. Under it the black machine sat on a folding table with a penny tin beside it and a card in her careful capitals: LETTERS TYPED WHILE YOU WAIT. Nobody waited long. The rain saw to that.

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The boy came just after the church clock struck twelve, soaked to the knees, holding an envelope with no stamp on it. He wanted a letter to a girl called Nell, who had gone south on the milk train with his heart in her coat pocket and a brass clock he had mended for her. He said it fast, as if the words might run off if he slowed. Ada rolled a sheet into the carriage, cracked her knuckles, and waited. He had nothing that would fit the page. 'Put what you can,' she said. 'The machine doesn't mind a mess.'

He gave her three sentences, then four, then stopped and asked how long a letter takes to reach a place like London. Ada said the post was slow but the typing was quick, and then she typed the thing he had not said. HOW SOON IS NOW. He read it upside down over her shoulder, went red to the ears, and laughed in a way that broke in the middle.

She folded the page into his hand and took his penny, though he tried to give two. Years later a woman came back on a Thursday with a clock that still ticked, and the rain was still falling on the penny tin, and the keys were still warm under Ada's fingers when she started the next one.