I brought the stool on a feeling, and the book records I were glad of it, and that's the system working as designed. The stool doesn't come on every walk — it comes when I have a feeling about the day — and the feelings are right often enough that I've never seen reason to change the method.
Right brogue, oxblood, laces in and tied, on the footpath below the Denby Dale viaduct with the arches going up above it. Good condition, barely a scuff, and oxblood is a colour the register doesn't see twice in a decade — browns and blacks are the trade's staples, and an oxblood brogue in November light stands out like a fresh conker. Cold and still, and late morning a bit of low sun came through the arches, which the book notes, because November sun through viaduct arches is worth a line in any book.
Flask conditions very good, cheese and pickle, the full sit. Six photographs, and the viaduct got in most of them, which I allowed — the entry actually says 'which I allowed', as if the viaduct had applied for permission. Ordinarily I keep the frame for the shoe, but there are structures that won't be kept out and the Denby Dale viaduct is one of them. Two years earlier I'd logged a boot under these same arches off a tip-off, so the ground had form. The brogue I found myself, no tip-off, which the ledger doesn't score differently but a man privately does.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.