Black linework tattoo of a vintage bicycle with hatched wheels on the outer forearm of a person wearing a lace top and dark jeans.

Vintage bicycle on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed black outline of an old-fashioned bicycle with a high frame, spoked wheels and a small saddle sits on the outer forearm. The linework uses fine hatching for shading on the wheels and frame, with a soft shadow beneath the bike. The image is a close crop showing the arm, a hand in a front pocket and a gold filigree ring, against a plain light background.

Fine line Forearm Bicycle Wheel

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost had not lifted from the lower field by the time Mam wheeled the old Raleigh out of the cart shed, and I remember thinking it looked like something from a museum, all high frame and fat tyres, its spokes furred white with rime. Dad had bought it off a vicar in Cirencester for eleven pounds and a promise to fix the gate. He never fixed the gate. He never rode the bicycle either, so it became mine, which meant it became the thing I rode six miles to the school bus stop in the dark, my breath going up in front of me like a second rider.

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That January the milk lorry stopped coming up the lane because of the snow, and the churns had to be carried down to the road by hand. I did the run on the Raleigh with two churns lashed either side of the back wheel, the bell gone and the saddle cold enough to hurt through my trousers. Halfway down Hobb's Hill the front wheel found a patch of black ice and went sideways, slow as a dream, and I put a foot down and watched the churns swing past me like two grey moons.

We got the milk to the road. Nobody thanked me for it, which was right, because nobody had asked me to be brave about it. Mam simply put the kettle on and said the bicycle had earned its keep, and she oiled the chain that night by the stove while the wind pushed at the window.

In spring I took the Raleigh down the lane with no churns at all, just to feel the wheels turn freely in the thaw. The hedges were budding and the road was dry and the sky above the ploughed field was the colour of a pigeon's wing. I stopped at the gate, the one Dad never fixed, and leaned the bike against it and simply sat there, listening to the spokes tick as they cooled.