A shoe on a lock beam is a shoe with a decision to make, and this one had made it well — balanced but secure, as the book puts it, on the beam of the top lock by Tunnel End. Right trainer, grey, laces gone. Fine morning, light rain arriving later, which is the standard Marsden arrangement.
The thing this entry is really about, though, is the boat. A boat came through the lock while I were photographing, and the chap worked the gate around the trainer without disturbing it. He didn't ask me what I were doing and I didn't explain, but he saw the camera, saw the shoe, and adjusted his gate-work accordingly, and the book records that I thought it were considerate, which I did and still do. You meet a certain amount of interference in this work — dogs mostly, the odd curious walker — and a man who navigates a lock gate around your subject without a word is the opposite of interference. If he ever reads this, which I doubt, I remain grateful.
Six photographs, and the entry notes the grain suits canal subjects, which had become a settled position by 2019 and remains one. Water, stone, and a grey trainer want a bit of grain about them. Flask conditions good, egg and cress. Tunnel End is a spot I'd sit at with no shoe at all, so a morning with one in it were a good morning by any measure.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.