First proper run out in the car since March. Five months. The notebook doesn't dwell on it, but the entry is longer than the ones around it and the handwriting is bigger, and my intro to that year's transcription says the same — come August, when we got the moors back, the handwriting gets bigger. This is the entry where it happens. Set off half seven, same as always, and the half seven felt like a ceremony that morning even if I'd not have used that word.
Right boot, black, heavily weathered — been out a winter at least, the book reckons, and looking at my photographs now I'd not argue — with no laces. It were by the overflow at Butterley Reservoir, above Marsden, and a boot that's sat out a winter by an overflow has earned a proper visit, which is what it got. Full sit-down: stool, flask, cheese and pickle in foil from Our Linda, and a Penguin. The whole kit deployed for the first time since winter, and everything worked, including me.
The book says it were a crackin' morning and I'd be lying if I said it weren't — sun on the water, light wind, Butterley doing the thing Butterley does when the light's right. Three photographs, two came out, which is a good return. Number 176 is not a remarkable boot. But it's one of the entries I come back to, because it's the sound of the register getting its legs back, and you can hear it in the ink.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.