A smart shoe for a lane. Left brogue, brown, polished once but not lately, laces in, on the lane under the viaduct at Denby Dale, in the shadow of the arch. Cool morning for August. The lane doesn't lead anywhere much, which made the polish all the more worth recording.
The viaduct does summat to the light underneath it, and all three photographs come out darker than the day were. I noted that at the time as a fact about the photographs, and I'll note it now as a fact about viaducts: the camera tells the truth about the arch, not the day. I've never taken a good photograph under a viaduct since, and I've stopped holding it against the camera. Barry once asked why I didn't just use the flash. I told him the flash makes every shoe look like evidence, and that isn't the tone.
The notebook says I noted the smartness and left it at that, and that's the whole entry doing its job. A brogue under a viaduct invites a story, and the register doesn't deal in stories. Flask conditions good. Denby Dale came back into the register in a big way in 2021 with the layby pair, but that's three years and fifty-eight shoes on from this one, and this brogue knew nowt about it.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.