The Butterley spillway is, to my mind, one of the finest pieces of stonework in the valley, and the notebook's disappointment is plain: two photographs, neither came out, 'which were a shame given the spillway'. I weren't photographing the spillway, I were photographing the shoe, but a shoe on them steps would have been a photograph worth having, and instead there's nowt. That's how it goes. The record says the shoe were there and the record is enough.
Right shoe, brown, lace-up sort, laces gone, on the spillway steps. Cold for September with the wind coming down the valley, which at Marsden it generally is.
Flask conditions good. Cheese and pickle. And the book says I sat a while on the stool regardless — 'regardless' being regardless of the cold and the failed photographs both. I remember that sit, or I believe I do: the water coming down the steps beside me and the shoe holding its position and neither of us in any hurry. You get maybe a handful of sits a year that stay with you and I'd count that one, though I accept the notebook only says 'sat a while' and the rest is me.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.