Back to walking from the house, for the time being — November 2020 brought that arrangement round again, and the notebook takes it the same way it took it in spring: "the park is on duty again." Beaumont Park did two tours of duty that year and never let the register down, which is more than can be said for some moors I could name but won't, because the moors couldn't help being out of reach.
Left shoe, black, slip-on sort, so no laces to record — and recorded as such, because the empty field gets written same as any other. It were under the bottom hedge by the Meltham Road gate, pushed in where the hedge meets the ground, and a black shoe under a wet hedge in November is about the hardest spot the year offered. I'd walked past that hedge twice before I saw it. The book doesn't say that. I'm saying it now, because these write-ups are meant to be honest and the notebook were sparing my blushes.
Wet underfoot, drizzle on and off all morning, the sort of day that never actually rains and never actually stops. The flask came but were drunk walking, which the book notes "isn't ideal," and it isn't — tea on the move is fuel, not tea. No photograph worth keeping. Between the hedge, the drizzle and the light, the camera never stood a chance, and the register carries number 181 on the written record alone. The written record is enough. It always were.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.