Black and grey pencil drawing of a tattoo design with curling vines, small flowers, a pocket watch on a chain with a key, and the script words Life is what you make of it.

Vine, flowers and pocket watch design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil-style drawing of a tattoo design set against a pale pink background. Curling stems, leaves, buds and small flowers rise from an ornamental scroll base, which holds a pocket watch with a dial, a twisted chain and a key. The words Life is what you make of it run in script beneath the watch, with fine shading on the watch case and stems.

Botanical Vine Flower Leaf Bud Pocket watch Clock Key Chain Scroll Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pocket watch had stopped at twenty to four the morning Ada's father was carried out of the workshop, and nobody in the village of Thrale had the nerve to wind it again. It sat on the bench under a film of sawdust while the lanes filled with cart ruts and the hedges went wild. Ada was nine, and she did not believe in stopped things, so she went looking for the key.

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It was in the drawer with the broken spectacles and a tin of clove drops, a small brass thing with a bent bow. She fitted it to the back of the case and turned until the spring gave a sound like a wren clearing its throat. The hands jumped, shuddered, then began their slow walk round the dial. Outside, the ivy that had crept over the sill for years had put out new shoots, green and curling, and when she opened the window they leaned in as if to listen.

Her mother found her at dusk, sitting on the step with the watch in her lap and a wreath of bindweed round her wrist. "It's gone on without him," her mother said, and Ada shook her head and held the watch up to the last of the light. The hands had moved a full hour. "No," she said. "It's gone on with the garden."

The following spring the vines reached the eaves and the lane was lined with foxgloves. Ada kept the watch wound, and wherever she went that year, people who had stopped their own clocks found themselves drawn to the bench to ask for the key.