Watercolour-style tattoo on the side of a hip and upper thigh, showing a teal ornate mirror frame, a small cottage, a black lace parasol and green grass stems.

Watercolour cottage and grass on side

Botanical · Other · Colour · Photo

The tattoo combines an ornate teal mirror frame, a small cottage with a green wash behind it, and a black lace-like parasol shape. Long grass stems in blue and green run down from the parasol along the thigh. The shading is soft and blended, with loose watercolour washes contrasting with finer dark linework on the parasol and frame.

Botanical Other Mirror Lace Grass Foliage House

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada had carried the mirror up Tallow Row wrapped in her mother's lace parasol, because the cart had gone to Hetton with the coal and nobody else would lend a hand. The frame was heavy with scrolls, painted the blue of a kingfisher once, and it knocked against her knees at every step. Her father said a looking glass in a pit village was bad luck. Her mother had said it was the only thing in the house that did not owe the company rent.

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Old Mrs Gilchrist at number nine had taught her the trick of it. Set the glass in the back window, facing the tip, so that when the lamps came up at shift change the light would bounce down the slope and show the men the way home. Ada did not believe a word of it. She hung it anyway, on a nail above the sill, and the cottage behind her seemed to lean in to look at itself.

The grass on the tip had come up green that spring, which nobody had expected. It ran in long stems out of the cinders, thin and blue-tinged in the early light, and it bent over the lane as if it were listening. Ada watched the lamps come over the ridge, one, two, a dozen, then counted again to be sure.

Her father was the last. She saw his lamp stop at the glass and flicker, as though he had caught sight of his own face and not recognised it. Then it came on down the hill, steady, and she unhooked the parasol, shook the lace out over the sink, and went to put the kettle on.