First of the year, this one, and the notebook says it were earned. Hard frost that morning, the towpath white over, and the shoe were on the towpath edge just below Lock 23E. Right trainer, black, laces gone. I took two photographs and one came out, which for January on that stretch is about par.
The flask gets a good word in the book — tea held its heat well in the cold, which I underlined, and I don't underline much. No stool that day. The stool were in its first winter and I hadn't yet worked out that frost is exactly when you want it, the ground being no place to sit. I remember the lock gates had ice on the beams, though that's memory, not the book.
Home by dinner, it says, and that's the whole entry. A tidy start to 2017. You don't want owt dramatic in January. You want a shoe, a photograph, and a flask that's doing its job.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.