A churchyard find, and churchyards ask for a bit of decorum, so this entry were conducted accordingly: no stool set up, photographs taken quietly, and away. The book records all three decisions and I'd make them again.
Left sandal, brown leather, buckle fastening, on the path between the yews at All Hallows, set neat against the edging stone. A gentleman's sandal, size nine or so, hardly worn. Sandals are not common in the register — the district doesn't produce many, for reasons of climate I should think — and a leather one with a buckle, hardly worn, in a churchyard, were as tidy an object as the book took in all year. Set neat is what I wrote, and neat is what it were.
There'd been heavy rain the day before and everything in the churchyard were still dripping, but the morning itself were fresh, rinsed-feeling, the way it goes after a proper downpour. Three photographs, one very good — the book actually says very good, which it doesn't say lightly — and I remember that photograph, the sandal against the wet edging stone with the yews dark behind. It's in the album still. Nobody about at that hour except a blackbird going at the wet grass, and the two of us minded our own business, which is the correct arrangement between a blackbird and a man in a churchyard.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.