The clocks had gone back that morning, and the notebook mentions it, because the light after the clocks change is its own category of light — flat all day, like the sky's given its notice. Lock 42E is up towards the top of the flight above Marsden, where the canal has nearly run out of valley to climb, and the towpath up there in late October is as quiet as anywhere on the register.
Right boot, brown, ankle sort, laces loose, and mud right through it — not mud on it, mud through it, which is a boot that's been somewhere and I'll say no more than that. It were tight against the balance beam of the lock, which is where the towpath funnels things, same as a wall bottom or a bridge hole. I've come to know the funnelling spots and the funnelling spots have come to know me.
The rain held off until I were done, which the book appreciates in writing — "which I appreciated" — and I did. I sat on the lock beam with the flask, and the notebook gives the tea its full due: flask conditions good, tea just right. Tea just right on a flat October morning at the top of the Marsden flight is not nowt. The photograph came out dark, but the book's verdict stands: it shows what it needs to. Boot, beam, mud. Number 180, and forty of the flight's locks between it and home.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.