The hundredth shoe. Right boot, brown, by the overflow steps at Butterley, laces in and tied in a double knot, which you don't often see and which the notebook remarks on ahead of anything else. Good condition. And then, further down the entry, three words: that makes a hundred. That's the whole of the ceremony. Reading it back, I'm satisfied with that. Any more would have been about me, and the register isn't about me.
Weather were fair, flask conditions good, and I sat with it a while on the stool — the stool being four months old by then and already part of things. Butterley twice in one year, and the second visit the milestone, though the reservoir can't be credited with knowing.
The double knot is the detail I come back to. Somebody tied that boot with the intention of it staying tied, and there it were, on its own by the overflow steps. I don't speculate on how a shoe comes to be where it is — that's not really the point of what I do — but I'm allowed to note that a double knot is a decision, and I noted it.
The photograph came out, and I'm glad, because it's the one a person might reasonably ask to see. A hundred shoes, October 2009 to August 2016, not quite seven years. I didn't mark the occasion beyond the entry. I had my tea, packed the stool, and went home, and the register carried on.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.