Traditional-style tattoo on a forearm showing a grey umbrella with a lightning bolt, rain, a paper boat sailing in a purple teacup and a red rose on the cup.

Umbrella storm and paper boat in a teacup

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A grey shaded umbrella with a yellow lightning bolt sits above falling rain dashes. Below, a yellow paper boat floats on grey-blue ripples inside a purple teacup with gold trim, and a red rose with white highlights decorates the front of the cup. Bold black outlines, solid fills and soft grey shading are used throughout, shown in three photographs of the same forearm piece.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming sideways off the harbour since Tuesday, and by Friday Nell Haddow had run out of patience and most of the Earl Grey. Dessie Crane came in at four, as he always did, and asked for something strong enough to stand a spoon in.

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Nell poured it black. Then he asked for a storm in it, which had been her father's joke: milky tea with sugar stirred in fast for the lightning, a napkin cloud tucked under the saucer, and a paper boat launched on the swirl. Nell had not done it since she was ten. She tore a corner from the order pad, creased a hull with her thumbnail, and set it on the tea, where it turned slow circles like something looking for a harbour.

Dessie watched it drift to the rim and bump against the porcelain. 'Your dad's boat,' he said. 'Mine went down off the Skerries with a lot less fuss.' He picked up his spoon and stirred, not gently, and the paper boat spun, tipped and righted itself, which Nell had not expected and he clearly had not either. The rain kept at the glass. Neither of them said anything for a while, and the tea went cold between them, and that was all right.

When Dessie left, the sky over the breakwater had thinned to a wash of pale grey. Nell found the boat still sitting on the saucer, soggy at one corner, and she did not throw it away. She set it on the windowsill to dry, where the next customer would see it and wonder, and where it could wait for the sea to go flat.

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