First of the year, and the book opens 2019 with a hard frost. Right boot, black leather, laces in but loose, sat on its side just off the path where the wall drops away. Deer Hill on a frosty morning is good walking — the ground were solid, which the book notes with approval, because that path can be a bog from November through to March and a solid version of it is a gift.
The notebook records flask conditions very good, tea held its heat to the last cup, and that detail tells you everything about the morning really. January finds are steady work. You're not expecting much company and you don't get much, and the shoe has usually been out a while by the time you reach it. This one hadn't — the leather were in fair order — but I noted the loose laces and left it at that.
Two photographs, both grainy, one usable, which by 2019 I'd stopped regarding as a problem. The camera were on its second year and I'd made my peace with the grain by then. What I couldn't have known on the twelfth of January, sat on a frozen wall with the last of the tea, were that this were the start of the busiest year the register has ever seen. Twenty-two shoes before December were out. It didn't feel like the start of owt. It felt like a boot on a cold path, which is what it were.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.