A sandal on a wall top by the church gate at Farnley Tyas. Right, brown leather, buckle fastened, child's size or near it. Warm morning, the hedges full of birds — the notebook lists them as 'birds', which is as far as my ornithology went in 2018 and, truth told, as far as it goes now. Farnley Tyas is a tidy village and the wall top were a tidy spot for it.
One photograph, grainy, but the buckle shows, and the fastened buckle is the detail that matters. Most sandals you find are flapping open. This one were done up as if it were still on duty. I recorded the fact and left the fact alone. Child's size or near it, I wrote, and I'll keep the 'or near it', because guessing at sizes without the shoe in hand is how errors get into a register.
Flask conditions fair — it were too warm for the tea to matter much, which the book admits with what I'd call reluctance. The note ends with the only pattern I've ever committed to in seventeen years of this: you see more sandals from May on. I'd written it as a hypothesis. It has held up. I've checked the register since and it holds, more or less, most years.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.