"A strong entry all round" is how the notebook closes this one, and the notebook doesn't say that twice in a year. Right trainer, navy, on the dam wall path at Digley Reservoir, and the detail that lifts it: the laces were knotted together. Both laces, tied to each other. The book says "noted but won't speculate on," and that's the discipline — laces knotted together is the kind of detail that invites a story, and the register does not deal in stories. It deals in laces, and these were knotted, and now you know what I knew.
The morning did its part. A good still one, mist off the water first thing, cleared by nine — Digley in September mist is worth the drive on its own, and I'd have called it a decent outing if there'd been no shoe at the end of it. There were a shoe at the end of it.
I sat on the stool a fair while, the book admits, "as it were too pleasant not to." Egg and cress. Flask conditions very good. Two photographs, both came out, which made it twice that year the camera went two for two — I checked back through when I noticed, because that's the sort of thing the register is for. Six years on, this is one I remember without the notebook's help: the mist going, the water flattening out, the navy trainer with its laces in a knot, and no reason to be anywhere else.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.