A wet one, this. The notebook has it raining the whole walk out and the whole walk back, the even sort that doesn't let up, and I remember that rain better than I remember most things from that February. Left boot, black, laces gone, tongue folded back with rainwater sat in it. It were on the towpath at Slaithwaite between the lock and the bridge, up against the wall.
We were still keeping local at the start of that year, same as everyone, and the towpath were about right for it. Not that I'd have gone further for a better boot. A boot's a boot wherever it stands, and this one had plainly stood there a while — the rain sat in the tongue weren't all that morning's rain, put it that way.
The photograph didn't come out well but I kept it, which the notebook confirms — 'kept it anyway' is the actual wording. I had the cheese and pickle under the bridge out of the rain, and flask conditions are down as fair, which in that weather I'd call an achievement of the flask rather than of me. Home wet through. Linda had the towel over the radiator, though that's memory, not the notebook. The notebook stops at 'fair'.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.